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Limit NVDA to running only on at least Windows 7 SP1 or Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 #7546

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merged 3 commits into from Sep 4, 2017

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michaelDCurran
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Summary of the issue:

It is becoming increasingly harder to maintain support for older Operating Systems while at the same time fixing bugs and adding new features for newer Operating systems. While fixing #7269 with pr #7535, support for Windows XP was broken.

Description of how this pull request fixes the issue:

With the merge of this PR, NV Access chooses to drop support of Operating systems older than Windows 7 SP1 or Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1.
See the official news release from NV Access at: https://www.nvaccess.org/post/nvda-2017-4-drops-support-for-older-operating-systems/

Windows 7 SP1 and Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 were chosen specifically as Microsoft no longer offers mainstream or extended support for XP, Vista, or Windows 7 with no Service Pack. Windows Server 2008 apparently is still in extended support, however we only have 7 active users. The Windows 10 SDK also only supports these Operating Systems at a minimum, and APIs needed in #7535 are only supported in Windows 7 and above.

This PR adds code to the start of NVDA that will show a standard Windows dialog alerting the user to the fact their Operating System is too old for this application, if they try to run it on anything less than Windows 7 SP1 or Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1.
NVDA was already displaying this dialog for Windows XP before the latest Service Pack.
This PR by itself deliberately does not introduce any breaking changes a part from the version check and user guide update. Once this is merged, other PRs can be created for such things as upgrading the Windows SDK etc.

Please note: NV Access will continue to offer the NVDA 2017.3 download from its website for those users who cannot switch to a newer Operating System. Similarly, the NV Access update server will keep users of these older Operating Systems at NVDA 2017.3.

Change log entry:

Changes:

  • The minimum supported Operating System for NVDA is now Windows 7 with Service Pack 1, or Windows Server 2008 R2 with Service Pack 1.

@josephsl
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josephsl commented Aug 31, 2017 via email

michaelDCurran added a commit that referenced this pull request Aug 31, 2017
…XP."

We are now planning to drop support for XP/Vista in PR #7546.

This reverts commit 2aed84c.
michaelDCurran added a commit that referenced this pull request Aug 31, 2017
@michaelDCurran
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Note that this pr is already incubating on Next in order to protect against anyone installing it on an older Operating system which will break things, due to #7535 already incubating. This still requires a review from @jcsteh though.

@LeonarddeR
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Looking at the launcher code, I noticed that it doesn't have windows version restrictions. Is this intentional?

@michaelDCurran
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michaelDCurran commented Aug 31, 2017 via email

@Brian1Gaff
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Brian1Gaff commented Aug 31, 2017 via email


- For Windows 7, NVDA requires Service Pack 1 or higher.
- For Windows Server 2008 R2, NVDA requires Service Pack 1 or higher.

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nit: Having a blank line before and after a sub-list is inconsistent with the rest of the User Guide. Also, the other sub-lists are indented with one space rather than two.

@michaelDCurran
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We will be merging this to master early as this finalizes the dropping of support for older Operating systems, allowing all new branches to carry this change. The change itself is very small with low risk.

@zahra21
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zahra21 commented Nov 11, 2020

"It is becoming increasingly harder to maintain support for older Operating Systems while at the same time fixing bugs and adding new features for newer Operating systems."
do you mean that drop supporting windows xp and vista was not intentional and you wished to support all of your users, but its diffficult to keep all operating systems and maintain supporting xp while adding support for new technologies in windows ten?
if so, i am very glad to hear it and i wish to help you and i am ready!
i am not unfamiliar with github.
i read hundreds of issues which are reported on github, whether they are bug fixes, new features, changes, or only the requests of your users that are not available in nvda yet.
so, i am sure of my sayings.
i realized that you wanted to better support onecore voices in windows ten.
supporting windows ten 1703 build 15063 and previous ones, work perfectly with visual studio 2015 and you continued supporting windows xp till the last version you made with visual studio 2015, (which is nvda 2017.3).
however, since you moved to visual studio 2017 to better support onecore voices in windows ten 1803 and later, you removed supporting windows xp.
i understand you and as i said, i am not unfamiliar with this and i really wish to help.
thanks again for your excellent and unique program and God bless you!

i searched about
how to support windows xp with visual studio 2017?
and found two results from microsoft website.
in this link, in Platform Targeting section, its clearly mentioned that maintaining compatibility with older windows versions is possible, while you modernize and add new features and capabilities of newer windows versions.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/productinfo/vs2017-compatibility-vs
this one explains requirements in visual studio 2017 for supporting windows xp.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/build/configuring-programs-for-windows-xp?view=msvc-160

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7 participants