Special compiling for Windows Vista? (Mod crashes on Vista but not on XP)

People tell me my mod is not running stable on Vista. It often crashes after some turns. It's original+better bts AI+some small additions. I'm using CodeBlocks for compiling (tried without and with all optimizations).

On Windows XP everything seems fine.

Any infos about that? Do I have to compile it with another program for Vista Users?

Any bad experiences on Vista and good on XP?

I doubt this will be much help to you, but I post in the hopes that you will find some solace in it...

I have both a Windows XP computer (powerful gaming desktop) and a Windows Vista computer (midline gaming laptop), and I have never had any trouble with any mods on Vista. I've created my own mini-mods, for example (simple but not well tested/organized etc.), and I've played Fall From Heaven 2 on the laptop as well (VERY complex, but probably well tested and organized). Like I said, I've never had any trouble on the Vista laptop (that I didn't also have on the XP desktop).

To be fair, I know for certain that none of my mini-mods used any SDK changes, and I'm pretty sure that FFH2 is almost exclusively Python (and not SDK), so that could play a part in this situation.

Hope you find your answers!

Vista is more picky than XP is about some errors, like failure to initialize variables. So there is an error somewhere in your code, but XP is cool enough to let it fly. If you switch over to VS2008+ to compile a debug DLL you will probably find an Assert firing somewhere that is linked to your Vista issues. Otherwise it is nearly impossible to locate it without actually running on vista yourself.

I'm pretty sure FfH uses its own DLL.

@xienwolf - If the above is correct, do the FfH SDK developers use VS2008 to compile the DLL? Do they also use a make file? I would love to move from 2005 to 2008, and I would really love to switch from a make file to having the tool do the build itself, assuming it auto-detects dependencies.

I was under the impression that 2008 couldn't be used because it produced an incompatible DLL.

I don't think Kael uses VS, but Vehem, Jean Elcard and myself all do, and we do use a Makefile for it.

Even though you use 2008 to work in, you still wind up using the libraries from 2003 to do everything, as I understand it. Maybe that is part of why we wind up using a makefile. :shrug:

That's what I would have thought. The makefile specifies the compiler (vc.exe) and linker (ld.exe) to use. There shouldn't be any further information taken from VS2008. Sure, you can tell the IDE to specify extra flags, but you can do the same in VC2005. I'll give it another try--I had tried to get VS2008 to do the compilation, and that failed. I don't think I tried to set up the makefile for it since it was already working in VC2005.

Thanks for the info.

</hijack>

Will using VS2005 or higher fix the Vista issue?

Not directly, but it can assist in finding minor "nuisances" (not enough of a bug to cause an XP crash, but enough of one to cause a Vista crash) without having to run Vista personally. Mostly this will happen with FAsserts, but sometimes the debug DLL will notice that something isn't quite right and it stops the program mid-flight to let you know.

Will I find possible errors by using the debug DLL with XP? Or do I need to use Vista to find errors?

edit: need help. I cannot start my mod with the new debug DLL, it says: msvcp71d.dll is missing.

edit2: downloaded the file and put it in system32. still not working.

edit3: regsvr32 MSVCP71.dll did not help either

edit4: copy the dll to D:\Spiele\Sid Meier's Civilization 4\Beyond the Sword did not help either