Visual Studio 2008 and Application Compatibility

I’ve noticed that Microsoft has stopped supporting the entire Win9x series (those that run on top of DOS – Win95, Win98, WinME) in VS 2008. Also, a few global variables have been removed (such as _winver). In my opinion, these allowed the programmer to get OS version numbers right using the CRT. That’s easy, at least for me.

If I’m not mistaken, VS 2003 was the last to support Win95; and VS 2005 (which I am using) was the last to support Win98/WinME. With VS 2008, you are forced to target Win2000 or later (WinNT 4.0 is not supported). But maybe the developers of Visual Studio should be aware that these “legacy” Windows OSes are not yet shelved up for indefinite storage (maybe Win95 on the shelf will not be a big suprise, but Win98 systems still exist up to this day, in PCs used for automation, for instance.)

Windows 98 was used in automation computers, since this ran on top of DOS, and DOS allows a program to directly access the hardware via simple memory location reads/writes. This functionality is important with certain applications of automation wherein direct hardware control is a must; an example maybe a part of a power plant.

Windows NT/2000/XP have the additional advantage of security; although this helps prevent hackers from breaking into the PC and turn it into a “zombie,” these security checks may unnecessarily slow down the program, and may sometimes become detrimental .

Note that I think Windows 95 is not used on a single computer (Even most Win9x-only devices don’t support Windows 95.)

Well, we are at the mercy of Microsoft, since they can do whatever they want – even breaking compatibility with existing applications (this is what they did in Windows Vista, using User Account Control.) But Microsoft shouldn’t do that breaking – eventually, customers will not buy a new version of their Windows operating system if they know their current applications won’t work on that new version of the OS; it’s very likely Microsoft’s efforts on improvement (such as security) will go to waste, since customers aren’t going to use the new version.

You may think of me as a hypocrite (since I’m now using Visual Studio 2008), but I’m trying to generate a Visual C++ 2008 CRT DLL proxy to the system CRT using Visual C++ 2005 (because this version, at least, supports Windows 98/ME in any case. I still have that copy installed on my PC, although only the Express Edition.)

I like compiler upgrades for their security, but I don’t like them if they are going to break support for Windows versions that are still in use (Windows 98, 2000, XP, Vista), and a workaround is virtually impossible.