I am a C# programmer. In my company we develop a program that, with a single executable, is deployed on various machines. My boss says that the only way to do that is to make a X86 executable that if working on X86 machines will surely work on X64 too. So I would like to know: is this the correct? And what are the drawbacks of having the same exe working on X86/X64. In any case what's the AnyCpu setting for.  Additionally since most of the IT companies diversify in X86/X64 wouldn't it be better?  Thanks Patrick
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I have some confusion related to the .NET platform build options in Visual Studio 2008.  What is the "Any CPU" compilation target, and what sort of files does it generate? I examined the output executable of this "Any CPU" build and found that they are the x86 executables (who would not see that coming!). So, is there any difference between targeting executable to x86 vs. "Any CPU"?  Another thing that I noticed, is that managed C++ projects do not have this platform as an option. Why is that? Does that mean that my suspicion about "Any CPU" executables being plain 32-bit ones is right?
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I need to run IE 10 in 32-bit mode on 64-bit Windows 7 Enterprise N.  When I run IE 10 from "C:\Program Files (x86)\Internet Explorer" I can see in task manager that I have only one process "iexplorer.exe" and no process "iexplorer.exe *32".  I have an application with an ActiveX that is supported only on 32-bit, and the application can't be loaded on 64-bit mode.  Is there a way I can force IE10 to run in 32-bit mode?
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I need my code to do different things based on the operating system on which it gets compiled. I'm looking for something like this:  #ifdef OSisWindows // do Windows-specific stuff #else // do Unix-specific stuff #endif   Is there a way to do this? Is there a better way to do the same thing?
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We are getting very slow compile times, which can take upwards of 20+ minutes on dual core   2GHz, 2G Ram machines.  A lot of this is due to the size of our solution which has grown to 70+ projects, as well as VSS which is a bottle neck in itself when you have a lot of files. (swapping out VSS is not an option unfortunately, so I don't want this to descend into a VSS bash)  We are looking at merging projects.  We are also looking at having multiple solutions to achieve greater separation of concerns and quicker compile times for each element of the application. This I can see will become a DLL hell as we try to keep things in synch.  I am interested to know how other teams have dealt with this scaling issue, what do you do when your code base reaches a critical mass that you are wasting half the day watching the status bar deliver compile messages.  UPDATE I neglected to mention this is a C# solution. Thanks for all the C++ suggestions, but it's been a few years since I've had to worry about headers.  EDIT:  Nice suggestions that have helped so far (not saying there aren't other nice suggestions below, just what has helped)   New 3GHz laptop - the power of lost utilization works wonders when whinging to management Disable Anti Virus during compile 'Disconnecting' from VSS (actually the network) during compile - I may get us to remove VS-VSS integration altogether and stick to using the VSS UI   Still not rip-snorting through a compile, but every bit helps.  Orion did mention in a comment that generics may have a play also. From my tests there does appear to be a minimal performance hit, but not high enough to sure - compile times can be inconsistent due to disc activity. Due to time limitations, my tests didn't include as many Generics, or as much code, as would appear in live system, so that may accumulate. I wouldn't avoid using generics where they are supposed to be used, just for compile time performance  WORKAROUND  We are testing the practice of building new areas of the application in new solutions, importing in the latest dlls as required, them integrating them into the larger solution when we are happy with them.  We may also do them same to existing code by creating temporary solutions that just encapsulate the areas we need to work on, and throwing them away after reintegrating the code. We need to weigh up the time it will take to reintegrate this code against the time we gain by not having Rip Van Winkle like experiences with rapid recompiling during development.
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Is there a way to have a 64 bit enum in C++?  Whilst refactoring some code I came across bunch of #defines which would be better as an enum, but being greater than 32 bit causes the compiler to error.  For some reason I thought the following might work:  enum MY_ENUM : unsigned __int64   {       LARGE_VALUE = 0x1000000000000000,   };
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I am trying to install the 16-bit game, "NBA Live 98" on my parents' desktop computer, but I got a message that says, word for word:     The version of this file is not compatible with the version of Windows you're running. Check your computer's system information to see whether you need an x86 (32-bit) or x64 (64-bit) version of the program, and then contact the software publisher.   Problem is, this computer game is obviously out of date and no longer supported.  Note: The desktop has Home Premium, so XP Mode and Program Compatibility Mode are out of the question. Also, my parents are not willing to downgrade their computer to XP (they discarded the OS CD years ago), and my backup desktop doesn't have a single administrator (everyone's limited). Finally, my laptop charger is broken, so I can't use my Dell Vista.
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Has anyone used Mono, the open source .NET implementation on a large or medium sized project? I'm wondering if it's ready for real world, production environments. Is it stable, fast, compatible, ... enough to use? Does it take a lot of effort to port projects to the Mono runtime, or is it really, really compatible enough to just take of and run already written code for Microsoft's runtime?
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I downloaded the first Command &amp; Conquer game  and burnt some CDs. I couldn't get the Setup.exe program to run in Windows 7 64-bit, as it must need some old DLLs. So I ran up the Windows XP Mode virtual machine, and was able to install it fine.   However, when I try to run the program, I just get an empty message box with an "OK" button. I've set the compatibility to Windows 95, and checked all of the options in the Compatibility tab, but it's not running. I also downloaded the patch suggested by EA, which is an updated version of the THIPX32.DLL file (copied into the C&amp;C installation folder).  Has anyone managed to get this working?
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I am not very experienced with computers, and was wondering what Direct X actually does, on my PC.  Why do various games request different versions? Should the latest version cover all of them, or do certain games only support specific versions?
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Currently I'm running Windows 7 x64 and usually I want all console tools to work with UTF-8 rather than with default code page 850.  Running chcp 65001 in the command prompt prior to use of any tools helps but is there any way to set is as default code page?  Update:  Changing HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Nls\CodePage\OEMCP value to 65001 appear to make the system unable to boot in my case.  Proposed change of HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Command Processor\Autorun to @chcp 65001&gt;nul served just well for my purpose. (thanks to )
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I thought .com is an ancient form for executable, leftover from early MS-DOS days? Why do they use that today in WinSCP? And why only for the CLI version?  I tried asking this in their chat room, but received not a single reply for days. As always.
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Can anyone help me run the game cs portable, I used to play this all the time on windows?? it's free and the download link is , the download link is in the bottom of his profile description.   The file extension is .x86 and the game is only 45MB, so it won't take long too download.
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Is there a "noop"-esque exe somewhere as part of the Windows installation? I'm preparing some batch jobs and scheduled tasks, and for a couple reasons I'd like to reference an executable that does nothing -- i.e. launches with no visible window, and quits immediately.  Does such an executable exist in the usual Windows installation anywhere? or how can I come close? I do not want to have to depend on anything not already included in Windows.
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My friend installed Windows 7 on his computer (upgrading from XP).  He wasn't sure if his processor supported x64 or not, so he installed the x86 version, just to be on the safe side.  After I looked it up, it turns out his processor does support x64, and now we want to upgrade.  The question is: is it possible to upgrade without completely re-installing the OS?  Can I? Or do I have to format the C: partition again?
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I've got a Windows 10 Computer (home edition), which has 4GB of Ram and an i5 processor. I need to run an old 32 bit accounting programme. The vendor said it won't release a 64 bit version (although a 64bit version exists, it's missing key features from the older version).  The programme installs fine, but when I click on the programme icon, it says the programme won't work on a 64 bit system.   What options do I have?    I've done a fair bit of research, but it seems to run up dead ends.   1) WoW64     Apparently, this is supposed to let you run 32 bits on 64 bit Windows. However, I am not sure how to install it. I think it's for web servers only. However,  says it can work on Windows 7, but doesn't explain how to set it up (or if it will work on Windows 10).  2) XP mode     A 32bit Windows XP emulator. However, it seems to be for Windows 7 only. Also according to this , you need Windows Professional.   3) Virtual Box Machine    Let's you emulate Windows. Seems overkill for my purposes. Plus I would need to buy a 32 bit Windows license. I think it would run slowly with 4GB of Ram.  4) Partition drive into 32bit and 64 bit versions Apparently, you can use the free tool  to split the drive into two and then install separate 32bit and 64 bit versions.   Again, seems overkill and it looks like I would need buy a 32 bit Windows 10 license.   Are these my only options?     Images  Installation    First run (From the error message I guess it's a 16-bit program)   Clicking on programme
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After following the instructions in INSTALL.W64 I have two problems:   The code is still written to the "out32" folder. I need to be able to link to both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of the library on my workstation, so I don't want the 64-bit versions to clobber the 32-bit libs. The output is still 32-bit! This means that I get "unresolved external symbol" errors when trying to link to the libraries from an x64 app.
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I'm learning C#, so I made a little C# program that says Hello, World!, then compiled it with mono-csc and ran it with mono:  $ mono-csc Hello.cs $ mono Hello.exe Hello, World!   I noticed that when I hit TAB in bash, Hello.exe was marked executable. Indeed, it runs by just a shell loading the filename!   Hello.exe is not an ELF file with a funny file extension:  $ readelf -a Hello.exe readelf: Error: Not an ELF file - it has the wrong magic bytes at the start $ xxd Hello.exe | head -n1 00000000: 4d5a 9000 0300 0000 0400 0000 ffff 0000  MZ..............   MZ means it's a Microsoft Windows statically linked executable. Drop it onto a Windows box, and it will (should) run.  I have wine installed, but wine, being a compatibility layer for Windows apps, takes about 5x as long to run Hello.exe as mono and executing it directly do, so it's not wine that runs it.  I'm assuming there's some mono kernel module installed with mono that intercepts the exec syscall/s, or catches binaries that begin with 4D 5A, but lsmod | grep mono and friends return an error.   What's going on here, and how does the kernel know that this executable is special?    Just for proof it's not my shell working magic, I used  (aka sh) to run it and it still runs natively.    Here's the program in full, since a commenter was curious:  using System;  class Hello {   /// &lt;summary&gt;   ///   The main entry point for the application   /// &lt;/summary&gt;   [STAThread]   public static void Main(string[] args) {     System.Console.Write("Hello, World!\n");   } }