Making a VS Project Work in Vista 64

Kenneth — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 21:06:36 +0000

Recently I came across an awesome open source application called My Exposé by Simon Ferquel. It uses Window’s Vista’s api to give Vista the same Exposé feature that you would find on a Mac. Using Vista’s api, it creates live thumbnails of your running applications. Pretty Nifty! The only problem was it didn’t work in 64bit versions of Vista! So I set out on finding a solution.

(**Edit** If you are looking for a good Exposé clone, check out my article: Exposé Clones Reviewed)

After downloading the source and getting it to build in Visual Studio 2008, I was greeted with a BadImageFormatException.

The fix was extremely easy. It took 3 steps:

1. Go to “Build->Configuration Manager.”

Configuration Manager" src="http://www.kennethbrandon.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/vsbuildclickconfigurationmanager.png" alt="" width="438" height="275" />

2. Change the project’s platform from “Any CPU” to “x86.” Because x86 isn’t listed you first must click “.”

3. Add x86. If you chose x64 it would work on 64bit Vista, but not on 32bit Vista. x86 should work on both versions.

That’s it! After clicking “OK” and rebuilding the project, It should work! At least it did for me!

Kenneth Brandon.com » Vista 64

Making a VS Project Work in Vista 64

The fix was extremely easy. It took 3 steps:

1. Go to “Build->Configuration Manager.”

2. Change the project’s platform from “Any CPU” to “x86.” Because x86 isn’t listed you first must click “.”

3. Add x86. If you chose x64 it would work on 64bit Vista, but not on 32bit Vista. x86 should work on both versions.