How to Run Platform SDK Setup on XP 64 Bit

Due to some project requirements, I had to install platform SDK and unfortunately it was an old version: FEB-2003. The OS in my machine was Windows XP 64 bit. When I tried to run the Setup.exe as normal, It showed up an error message: “The image file E:\PlatformSDK\Setup.Exe is valid, but is for a machine type other than the current machine.”. My first thought was like I need to find a 64bit compatible Platform SDK setup, but what I needed wasn’t a 64 bit Platform SDK, but a 32 bit one which need to be installed on my 64 bit XP.

16-bit setup error

After some search, I got to know that the reason for the error is not about 32 bit, 64 bit incompatibility, but the Setup.exe I executed was a 16 bit application. It showed an error because 64 Bit OS doesn’t support 16 bit applications. But when I simply went inside the “setup” folder and ran the “PSDK-x86.msi”, It worked fine! I was able to install Platform SDK.

Now let’s look at checking whether an application is 16-Bit or 32 Bit.  The very simple method is simply right-clicking the executable and checking for the version tab. If it have a version tab, It is a 32-bit (or above) application, else 16-bit.

Application Log Joiner

You may think that I’m overly obsessed with this log analysis! But not really. I’m not even interested in it. And because of that I wanted to make it easier and easier. And yea! there is another application for your help if different modules or processes of your software logs in different log files. Obviously it will be really difficult to look through different files for a single execution path. If its a non reproducible bug provided with merely these logs, Nothing else can get crazier than this.

What this application does is simple. It reads multiple log files, merge them in the order of the time / tick count information in the log entries and make it a single file. the file name from which the log entry is taken will be given along with the merged log entries for clarity. And above all these, you can specify the tick count or time range in which the log entries need to be taken and merged for each file. So you can analyse only the selected portions of different log files merged together. Leave blank in order to take the whole file for merging.

The reading of time information, the text parsing of the format, delimiter etc is same as the Log Highlighter application provided in the previous post. So please read that too for the better understanding of the working of this application. This application works great with the same. You can provide the Log joiner’s output as input to the Log Highlighter and have it highlighted according to the time / tick count difference.

So, wish you a good time analyzing logs!

Download: LogJoiner.rar