Use Visual Studio 2013 Express Edition for Windows Desktop
Windows DDK 7.1 download location
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=11800
Windows SDK 7 (version 7.6) download location:
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=8279
Visual Studio 2013 Express Edition for Windows Desktop
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=40787
Quick setup of a lightweight ftp server on personal computer
Having a small ftp server running on your personal computer can be very useful, especially sometimes when you want to transfer files cross Windows domains or cross firewalls.
To get a copy of ftp server, download from here. The program can run on Windows 7 x64 edition.
https://filezilla-project.org/download.php?type=server
Filezilla also has a nice ftp client software.
The ftp server control and configuration can only be done (by default) from local machine so normally we don't need to worry too much about re configuring its default port number (17174) or admin password (can leave it blank if you know what you are doing). Once logged in, we need to create a group first and then create at least one user. And then assign the shared folder either through group or user. After the configuration, we can test from local machine by using command line "ftp". If this works we should see communications and handshaking in the monitor software.
However, under windows 7, a remote machine still can't access this ftp server. The problem is OS has security features to block such a communication. To change, go to control panel
Control Panel\System and Security\Windows Firewall\Allowed Programs
And then add the FileZilla FTP server to the list. This should fix the remote access problem.
Migration from Visual Studio 2012 to Visual Studio 2013
The tag "PlatformToolset" included in vcxproj file specifies the tool chain used in the Visual Studio IDE.
For Visual Studio 2012, this value is set to “v110”; for Visual Studio 2013, this value is set to “v120”.
Note that by default the code compiled under Windows 7 using Visual Studio 2012 cannot run on Windows XP system even though it works on Windows 7. The issue can be fixed by updating the latest service pack like "Update 1" or the newer versions such as "Update 4" for Visual Studio 2012.
When using Visual Studio 2013 Express Edition for Windows Desktop (free), two versions of tool sets will
be installed by default. One is “v120” as default, and the other is “v120_xp” which is targeted for Windows
XP platform.
After updating the PlatformToolset tag, Visual Studio 2013 will not complain when opening the solution files with theses vcx project files.
To compile code for Windows XP platform using Visual Studio 2012
It is very interesting to know that the code compiled by Visual Studio 2012 on Windows 7 won't even run on XP system, unless, you upgrade their service pack to "Update 1" or newer versions like "Update 4". Once the update is finished, open the property page, and under configuration properties - general- platform toolset option, set parameters to Visual Studio 2012 - Windows XP (v110xp). Then everything should be fine. Note that on the target platform, i.e. the xp system, one needs to install the Visual C++ 2012 redistributable package.
