bug#29350: 25.2; Emacs 25.3+ fails to start on Windows XP

bug#29350: 25.2; Emacs 25.3+ fails to start on Windows XP

[Uwe Siart]

Emacs 25.3 and newer fails to start on a Win XP box. When clicking
runemacs.exe I get an error that says that the procedure call "_time32"
fails in msvcrt.dll.

I don't see this with Emacs 25.2.

I got that issue with

ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/emacs/windows/emacs-25.3-i686.zip

and also with

ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/emacs/pretest/windows/emacs-26-snapshot-x86_64.zip

and

ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/emacs/pretest/windows/emacs-27/emacs-27.0.50-snapshot-i686.zip




In GNU Emacs 25.2.1 (i686-w64-mingw32)
 of 2017-04-24 built on LAPHROAIG
Windowing system distributor 'Microsoft Corp.', version 5.1.2600
Configured using:
 'configure --host=i686-w64-mingw32 --without-dbus
 --without-compress-install 'CFLAGS=-static -O2 -g3''

Configured features:
XPM JPEG TIFF GIF PNG RSVG SOUND NOTIFY ACL GNUTLS LIBXML2 ZLIB
TOOLKIT_SCROLL_BARS

Important settings:
  value of $LANG: DEU
  locale-coding-system: cp1252

Major mode: Buffer Menu

Minor modes in effect:
  icomplete-mode: t
  global-hi-lock-mode: t
  hi-lock-mode: t
  electric-pair-mode: t
  display-time-mode: t
  delete-selection-mode: t
  auto-insert-mode: t
  tooltip-mode: t
  global-eldoc-mode: t
  electric-indent-mode: t
  mouse-wheel-mode: t
  file-name-shadow-mode: t
  global-font-lock-mode: t
  font-lock-mode: t
  blink-cursor-mode: t
  auto-composition-mode: t
  auto-encryption-mode: t
  auto-compression-mode: t
  buffer-read-only: t
  column-number-mode: t
  line-number-mode: t
  transient-mark-mode: t

Recent messages:
Mark set [3 times]
Auto-saving...done
Mark set [2 times]
Auto-saving...done
Mark set
Sending...
You have lines longer than 79 characters.  Really post? (y or n) y
Mark set [2 times]
Sending news via news.informatik.tu-muenchen.de using nntp...
Sending...done

Load-path shadows:
None found.

Features:
(shadow emacsbug sendmail canlock thingatpt browse-url rfc1345 quail
nnir sort ansi-color gnus-cite mail-extr qp gnus-bcklg gnus-async
gnus-ml hl-line gnus-topic nndraft nnmh network-stream nsm auth-source
eieio eieio-core starttls gnus-agent gnus-srvr gnus-score score-mode
nnvirtual gnus-msg gnus-art mm-uu mml2015 mm-view mml-smime smime dig
mailcap nntp gnus-cache gnus-sum gnus-group gnus-undo gnus-start
gnus-cloud nnimap nnmail mail-source tls gnutls utf7 netrc nnoo
parse-time gnus-spec gnus-int gnus-range message idna dired format-spec
rfc822 mml mml-sec password-cache epg mm-decode mm-bodies mm-encode
mail-parse rfc2231 rfc2047 rfc2045 ietf-drums mailabbrev gmm-utils
mailheader gnus-win gnus gnus-ems nnheader gnus-util mail-utils mm-util
help-fns mail-prsvr tango-dark-theme icomplete hi-lock elec-pair time
delsel finder-inf info tex-site package epg-config seq byte-opt bytecomp
byte-compile cl-extra help-mode cconv autoinsert dired-sort-map server
remember htmlfontify cus-edit easymenu cus-start cus-load wid-edit
htmlize cl-seq cl boxquote cl-macs gv rect paren edmacro kmacro
cl-loaddefs pcase cl-lib time-date mule-util tooltip eldoc electric
uniquify ediff-hook vc-hooks lisp-float-type mwheel dos-w32 ls-lisp
disp-table w32-win w32-vars term/common-win tool-bar dnd fontset image
regexp-opt fringe tabulated-list newcomment elisp-mode lisp-mode
prog-mode register page menu-bar rfn-eshadow timer select scroll-bar
mouse jit-lock font-lock syntax facemenu font-core frame cl-generic cham
georgian utf-8-lang misc-lang vietnamese tibetan thai tai-viet lao
korean japanese eucjp-ms cp51932 hebrew greek romanian slovak czech
european ethiopic indian cyrillic chinese charscript case-table epa-hook
jka-cmpr-hook help simple abbrev minibuffer cl-preloaded nadvice
loaddefs button faces cus-face macroexp files text-properties overlay
sha1 md5 base64 format env code-pages mule custom widget
hashtable-print-readable backquote w32notify w32 multi-tty
make-network-process emacs)

Memory information:
((conses 8 235155 36632)
 (symbols 32 32968 0)
 (miscs 32 171 547)
 (strings 16 56705 7051)
 (string-bytes 1 1770981)
 (vectors 8 35242)
 (vector-slots 4 1409231 55822)
 (floats 8 435 393)
 (intervals 28 863 730)
 (buffers 520 35))

-- 
Dr.-Ing. Uwe Siart
Chair of High-Frequency Engineering
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Technical University of Munich (TUM)
Arcisstr. 21, 80333 München, Germany
Email: uwe.siart@tum.de
Tel.:  +49.89.289.23374
Fax:   +49.89.289.23365

bug#29350: 25.2; Emacs 25.3+ fails to start on Windows XP

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Uwe Siart <uwe.siart@tum.de>
> Date: Sat, 18 Nov 2017 11:46:08 +0100
> 
> Emacs 25.3 and newer fails to start on a Win XP box. When clicking
> runemacs.exe I get an error that says that the procedure call "_time32"
> fails in msvcrt.dll.
> 
> I don't see this with Emacs 25.2.
> 
> I got that issue with
> 
> ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/emacs/windows/emacs-25.3-i686.zip
> 
> and also with
> 
> ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/emacs/pretest/windows/emacs-26-snapshot-x86_64.zip
> 
> and
> 
> ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/emacs/pretest/windows/emacs-27/emacs-27.0.50-snapshot-i686.zip

I'm guessing this is because MinGW64, whose headers and libraries are
used to produce the 32-bit builds of Emacs on Windows, dropped the XP
support some time ago.  FWIW, mingw.org's MinGW still supports XP (and
also Windows 9x), and we didn't decide to drop XP support in Emacs
yet.

bug#29350: 25.2; Emacs 25.3+ fails to start on Windows XP

[Uwe Siart]

Dear all,

The latest Emacs 27 snapshot binaries (of 2017-11-25) on alpha.gnu.org
work again with Windows XP. Many thanks for fixing this.

-- 
Uwe