http://www.netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx?qprid=11&qp customb=0&qptimeframe=M&qpsp=149&qpnp=11 ^-- Source of my data in this message...
That is something that has been bugging me too while reading this discussion. So my random thoughts on this topic of OS compatibility... The cryptic error originally reported by OP isn't good. We only support Windows XP SP3+ as well, but if the user double-clicks the bootstrapper / self-extracting EXE, they need to get a messaging saying they need XP - not some cryptic error that might turn a user away from our application. Unfortunately, with the way Visual C++ has been dumping support for older versions of Windows, it looks like we would need to retain an older Visual C++ compiler (or find a competing compiler) for the sole purpose of making our own custom bootstrapper that shows a reasonable error. What a pain! Would be nice if WiX prevented this piece of overhead... >From that link, I would guess that Windows 2000 usage must be close to zero (lumped into the 2.51% "Other" category). I'm less worried about that. But there's still significant XP usage, and dumping support for pre-SP2 versions of XP is disturbing. How can the bootstrapper request the user to install SP3 if the bootstrapper itself requires SP2/SP3? >From what I have read, the situation gets much worse with VS11 since it drops XP support completely. This is a problem, because apparently XP still has 46% of the market. I know many of our customers still use it. We can't drop support for it. VS11 is out of touch with reality in this respect. If bootstrappers and/or custom actions start requiring Vista+, we'd have to avoid the newer versions of WiX. We'll also have to avoid VS11 ourselves for the time being. The improvements in VS11 might not justify dropping support for a lot of our customers, if it turns out not to be realistic to ask them to upgrade. And the concerns I already outlined about bootstrappers not failing gracefully apply doubly-so here - even if XP drops to, say, 10% of the market and we decide to drop support, there's still enough out there that we need the bootstrapper to kindly request Vista+. It would be nice if XP suffered a precipitous drop in market share this year, but I doubt it. Hopefully it will go away soon. I suspect it will still be common for another 2 years until companies are forced to move away from it when MS finally kills support (or suffer the security liability from an unpatched/unsupported OS). Some people/companies tend to avoid change until their lack of planning forces them into it - and maybe MS dropping support will push them over the edge to get Win7/8. By then, VS12 would be coming down the pipeline, and companies like us would still be stuck on VS2010 or older due to XP compatibility concerns if we decide not to drop support for XP just yet. (XP is the energizer bunny or something... it keeps going and going. I can't remember another consumer OS version that has had such a long life cycle!) James > -----Original Message----- > From: Neil Sleightholm [mailto:n...@x2systems.com] > Sent: Monday, April 30, 2012 15:57 > To: General discussion for Windows Installer XML toolset. > Subject: Re: [WiX-users] Bundle fails on WIN2K machine ".exe is not a valid > Win32 application" > > I agree with dropping support for Win2k but what is a shame is that running > the exe doesn't display a more useful error message. I don't suppose there is > anything that can be done to change this? > > Neil ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Live Security Virtual Conference Exclusive live event will cover all the ways today's security and threat landscape has changed and how IT managers can respond. Discussions will include endpoint security, mobile security and the latest in malware threats. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfrnl04242012/114/50122263/ _______________________________________________ WiX-users mailing list WiX-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wix-users
