well i was compiling several windows programs when I came across this...the information was from various sources and it seems well known about amongst program developers.Without showing proof about MS building in deliberate tools, you are not doing your credibility any favours.
In this case it was for 2000 as was a few years back and any dev who wanted to could hack the headers to build 2000 friendly programs using the non 2000 friendly SDKs.... this technique will be being applied and the example mentioned earlier is a current one...indeed it mentions that the builder was able to make changes to the SDK in just the same way.
if they were truly different how could he do this and get a working build?(I have to make special arrangement in VS2012 to build for XP),
Ask him...he will give a similar answer to that which I found
Note that using VS 2010 will make an XP friendly build and VS 2012 will not unless you fiddle... same sources...same resultant software..same target system.
You must have come across 'this is not a win32 executable' before....the message you get when a kernel function call is not present. If that function call was essential to the software then XP would be out of the question but its simply that the later SDK are designed to prevent building XP software in order to promote/sell new systems...after all it is their business and their software so they can do what they like...better than threatening hardware retailers like they used to.
The parallel is 'environmental' justifications for scrapping perfectly good cars that are used in many countries.
here is an example of the stuff I had to plough through...
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1130 ... pplication
I have not the time or the inclination to make this stuff up.
yes the different NT core... same kernel... apart from the dummy functions there may be the odd addition. MS have no reason to deviate from using the NT system they paid for...it does the job nicely and they can simply add to it.Yes Vista and Win 7 used a different core,
A good test would be to run dependency walker on an exe and compare the functions shown in the kernel for XP and 7.
Between 2000 and XP the only changes were 2 functions that did not actually do anything a system would need...hence the term 'dummy'
Analysing an exe in this way would save doing a net search and would be interesting to see what has been added.
As for antivirus...well you know i am the bunny who has never used it and not had a sniff in over 10 years...either I am very lucky or got something right. 7 seems a lot more inherently secure when i tried it...and IE/outlook is sort of removable now...at least it was well hidden when I tried it.
All that seems left is someone grabbing the web trinkets that hide nasties cos they cannot help themselves, but protecting those users is always going to ultimately fail...same as even the safest cars will still end up with casualties if an idiot drives recklessly.... More fool them and just try and keep out of their way.
mike