A couple of observations:
- Pure MFC applications don't require the .NET framework, unless you are calling .NET libs via COM.
- If an app requires the .NET framework , anything above 2.0 needs to be "installed"/enabled on Windows 8. (i.e. using DISM).
- C/C++ applications built with VS 2010SP1 <may> require VS2010 SP1 redistributables to be installed along with the application depending on what libraries it is using. Have you tried this?
- Are you using a real installer to install your application?
- Have you tried to run your application (the Release build) on real hardware - i.e. outside of a VM? You imply this, but never state that this has been done and if so, see if that machine has the redistributables installed.
- Over the past year, I've designed, implemented and tested a lot of MFC/COM applications/dlls and haven't run into any issues (yet) in VMs running Windows 7/32-bit and Windows 8/32-bit. (I've had issues with my code, but that's just me:) ) I have not had the need for 64-bit support, yet..