Can Visual Studio Express 2005 Create Self-Contained .exe Files for Older Windows Systems?

Creating Standalone .exe Files with Visual Studio Express 2005

Visual Studio Express 2005 offers a free and powerful C development environment. However, it poses a challenge in producing standalone .exe files that can run on outdated systems without relying on external DLLs.

Problem:

When static linking is specified within the Visual Studio toolset, the generated .exe still relies on DLLs such as msvcm80.dll. Additionally, a complex deployment system using manifest files restricts executable execution to specific DLL versions.

Query:

Is it possible to create a self-contained .exe using Visual Studio Express 2005 that performs basic Win32 operations and is compatible with older Windows operating systems?

Solution:

For C-Runtime:

• Navigate to the project settings.
• Select C/C > Code Generation.
• Change the 'runtime library' setting to 'multithreaded' from 'multithreaded dll'.

For External Libraries:

If third-party libraries are utilized, the linker may require an explicit instruction to ignore the dynamically linked CRT.

By implementing these changes, you can generate statically linked .exe files with Visual Studio Express 2005 that operate independently and are compatible with older Windows systems.

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