I'm working on a Windows MFC GUI application that uses CUDA for high-performance image processing.

Previously, I was using CUDA 12.0 on a system with an RTX 3090 (Ampere), and everything compiled and worked fine.

Recently, I upgraded my system to use an RTX 5090 (Blackwell), and to take full advantage of the new hardware, I decided to upgrade to CUDA 12.8 to support sm_120 architecture.

Visual Studio Ver : 2022 / 17.13.5

However, after switching to CUDA 12.8, I started encountering the following compile-time error:

fatal error C1189: #error: MFC requires use of Winsock2.h

The error originates from afxwin.h:

#ifndef _WINSOCK2API_
#ifdef _WINSOCKAPI_
  #error MFC requires use of Winsock2.h
#endif
  #include <WinSock2.h>
#endif

Even though I’ve ensured that pch.h includes winsock2.h before windows.h or any MFC headers, the error still occurs only when using CUDA 12.8.

✅ What works

• When switching to CUDA 12.4, the exact same project compiles and runs without any issue.
• No source or build setting changes — just the CUDA version.