FTN95 .NET not working on Windows 8

There seems to be a major problem with the .NET functionality on Windows 8 OS. All our FTN .NET applications built on Win7 cause an exception on Windows 8. Furthermore, building of .NET applications or application extensions on Windows 8 doesn't work. I've tried all of the FTN95 standard .NET examples (Mandelbrot, Threads, MessageBox...), none of them worked. Even the most simple code:

Program Test Write (,) 'Hello World' Pause End Program

causes following error messages:

------ Erstellen gestartet: Projekt: FTN_Test_w32, Konfiguration: Debug .NET ------ Building project FTN_Test_w32... Updating References... Compiling file: FreeFormat1.f95 Linking... Unhandled Exception: System.TypeInitializationException: The type initializer for 'Salford.Linker' threw an exception. ---> System.TypeInitializationException: The type initializer for 'Salford.Fortran.RTLibrary' threw an exception. ---> System.TypeInitializationException: The type initializer for 'Salford.Fortran.RTLibrary1' threw an exception. ---> System.AccessViolationException: Attempted to read or write protected memory. This is often an indication that other memory is corrupt. at Salford.Fortran.RTLibrary1..cctor() --- End of inner exception stack trace --- at Salford.Fortran.RTLibrary1.__init_c_io() at Salford.Fortran.RTLibrary.InitLibrary() at Salford.Fortran.RTLibrary..cctor() --- End of inner exception stack trace --- at Salford.Fortran.RTLibrary.InitLibrary() at Salford.Linker..cctor() --- End of inner exception stack trace --- at Salford.Linker.Main(String[] args) Build log saved at: 'file://c:\users\periskic\documents\visual studio 2010\Projects\FTN_Test_w32\Debug\NET\buildlog.txt' FTN_Test_w32 build failed. ========== Build: 0 erfolgreich oder aktuell, Fehler bei 1, 0 übersprungen ==========

The test were performed on Windows 8 Release Preview x86 with Visual Studio 2010 and FTN95 Versions 6.2 and 6.3. Building Win32 Applications seems to be working without problems.

Please advise how to cotinue, the problem has high urgency due to very soon Windows 8 release!

We are actively looking at this.

Ok, it's good to know that something is going on in Silverfrost concerning this topic. For us as software developer who are using FTN95 .NET commercially it is cruical that our applications are supported on all current windows versions.

Can we expect a solution soon (by the end of the year)?

Regards, Goran

Still no good news concerning Win-8 compatibility. Simple recompilation of Silverfrost libraries didn't solve the problem.

Can you tell us what priority this topic (and .NET generally) has for Silverfrost? Please let us know if no solution is planned in the next 1-2 months. We need to decide how to proceed and how to make our programs Win-8 compatible, even if this means abandoning FTN95 .NET compiler.

Be assured this issue has a high priority.

I just want to remind of the 'high priority' of the topic. Are there some new positive results?

Yes we are making progress.

Have You already made so much progress to be able to estimate when the problem will be fixed? Can we expect an update until the end of the year?

Yes maybe. The problem is that a part of the .NET framework doesn't work on Windows 8 - and we seem to be the only people using it... Microsoft are being helpful in providing work around information.

Please give us a small update on your current progress. Is there land in sight?

We provide commercial software using FTN95.Net and we too are finding that they will not work with Windows 8. For our customers it would be helpful to be able to give them a timescale for this issue to be resolved.

I wish I had better news. We have done quite a bit of work on this problem but it still refuses to work correctly. We will keep you informed.

On the edge of our seats here. Can't stress how critical this is to us.

Can you give some detail on what specifically is wrong, to help us understand the problem? I.e. what part of the .NET Framework isn't working on Windows 8, as you mention above?

You can read about the initial issue here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/13541483/windows-8-net-4-5-defineuninitializeddata-issue

It have now been more than 3 months since I pointed out the Win-8 problem here and there is still no progress. Not even an notice about the newest development. What is going on? Are you able to solve the problem or not?

There have been notices about this issue and there has been progress, just nothing we can show at the moment. We would really like this issue fixed and as soon as we can.

There has been more progress on this issue and we hope to post more soon.

These are great news. Keep on the hard work, we are eager to hear some more soon.

Do we have any volunteers to try out a new compiler and linker (and runtime) to use with .NET and Windows 8?

We could test some of our programs. Please advise what is to be done.