The VS2010 MSVCRT still runs on Windows XP SP2+ as mentioned in your second link.
The VS2012 MSVCRT will not run on XP initially, but a post-RTM patch to bring XP support back was mentioned on the VS blog[1]. So that would only prevent XP support between the VS2012 release and the post-RTM patch, and only if the PHP team upgraded at the first chance.
The VS2012 MSVCRT will not run on XP initially, but a post-RTM patch to bring XP support back was mentioned on the VS blog[1]. So that would only prevent XP support between the VS2012 release and the post-RTM patch, and only if the PHP team upgraded at the first chance.
[1]: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/visualstudio/archive/2012/05/18/a-lo...