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Developing Window Store Apps in Visual Studio 2013 on Window 7 64-bit without emulator

This is going to be quite a long question but please bear with me till the end. Before going into the details, below are my PC environments:
Windows 7 Professional x64
Visual Studio Community 2013 Update 4
On top of that, I checked my PC's processor does support virtualization using Intel® Processor Identification Utility.
I also installed all the required SKD 8.1 components required to develop Windows phone 8.1 apps as shown in the picture below.
Now I clearly understands from the visual studio website requirements:-
Windows Phone 8.0 development requires Windows 8.1 (x64) or higher
Windows Phone 8.1 development requires Windows 8.1 (x86) or higher
For the Windows Phone emulators, Windows 8.1 (x64) Professional
edition or higher, and a processor that supports Client Hyper-V and
Second Level Address Translation (SLAT)
But from this SO Q&A it seems like developing windows 8.1 phone apps is still possible. However when I try to open an existing windows phone 8.1 project I got the error as shown in the picture below:
On top of that, in my Add New Project window there are no Windows Store Apps templates showing up.
I later found out from this msdn documentation that the RequiredPlatformVersion Element of the Visual Studio project template is filtering out the templates. However I tried to change the Blank Windows Phone project template element's value to 8 as specified in the documentation and also a few others value smaller than 6.3.0 but still fail to show the template.
Then I tried to install an extension called Windows Phone Template Pack which then adds two window phone project templates in my Add New Project window as shown below.
I created an empty project using that template and surprisingly I am able to open the windows phone 8.1 project as shown in the picture below.
That got me thinking that it should be possible to develop windows phone 8.1 apps but not emulating it but I am out of ideas on how to work around it now. I even tried looking at the denv.exe.config file to try my luck but there's nothing of interest there either.
Is there anyone that successfully build a Windows Phone 8.1 apps in an similar PC environment? A workaround will be sufficient.

Sorry to say this but Windows 8.1 is a requirement for developing as usually emulators on being initialized tries to load the OS into the device like the basic theme etc options.
1) You can try to connect your Windows phone to your PC and select Deploy to Device. (Though it might work and you will be able to debug yet still you would face a problem when you try to create a release build package to be uploaded on windows store. Also even though the fixes might work for short period but with Windows 10 about to be released you would be stuck with waiting for a fix to develop apps for that.)
2) You can try installing windows 8.1 inside VMWARE and deploy it.

Does IBM MobileFirst support native C#/Xaml apps for windows phone 8.1/windows 8.1?

To further clarify the title.
I don't mean HTML5 hybrid apps or apps that have been developed for windows 8/ windows phone 8 and run on windows 8.1/ windows phone 8.1
I would like to know if IBM MobileFirst supports native apps written for windows 8.1 and/or windows phone 8.1 .
For example a universal app.
From what I have read and the tutorials I've seen there is no way to generate dlls for windows 8.1 and windows phone 8.1. Am I missing something?

Have you taken a look at the IBM MobileFirst Platform Developer Center or the IBM MobileFirst Platform Knowledge Center? you'll find your answers there...
Windows Phone 8 - There are tutorials for Native Windows Phone 8.x development (more to come in the future).
https://developer.ibm.com/mobilefirstplatform/documentation/getting-started-native-wp8-development-6-3/
http://www-01.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/SSZH4A_6.2.0/com.ibm.worklight.dev.doc/dev/c_developing_native_apps_wp8.html
Windows 8 - Native Windows 8 support is also available (but not yet mentioned in the dev center)
http://www-01.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/SSHS8R_6.3.0/com.ibm.worklight.dev.doc/dev/c_developing_native_apps_w8.html
Search the Knowledge Center for more information...

#corus I was able to reproduce your problem consistently! What fixed was the changing the build action of the wlclient.properties file to Content.
Go to solution explorer
Right click on wlclient.properties and select "Properties"
Set the "Build action" property to "Content" (this is missing in the knowledge center)
Also set the "Copy to output directory" to "always"
This should fix the crash issue.

#corcus Part 1 - Currently upto IBM MF 6.3 - there is no formal support in the product UI but we have been qualifying Visual Studio 2013 in the meanwhile (https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/community/blogs/worklightsmobileplayground/entry/ibm_worklight_and_microsoft_visual_studio_2013?lang=en)
Part 2 - our current WindowsPhone8 environment is Silverlight based. What you can try doing is Create a native app with Windows8 environment (this will create a C# app). Open it in VS2013 and then add a Windows Phone 8.1 project to it. Then add the DLL references to the phone project and copy the assets to the Phone Project (or Shared Project) and try running on the Win 8.1 phone. This should work (I have tried Hybrid and it works, but not native - hence not saying conclusively)

can not add System.Data.Linq reference in windows phone 8.1

I am unable to add System.Data.Linq reference from the add reference in the System.Data.Linq Visual Studio 2013 update 2. This reference is not shown, it says that all the available references have been added.
But when I import System.Data.Linq and System.Data.Linq.Mapping, it shows if I am missing a reference or an assembly.

Unfortunately the entire System.Data namespace is unavailable to the new non-Silverlight Windows Phone Apps.
This is because SQL CE has not been made available to the Windows Runtime. So we have to find our own database implementation to store structured data locally on the phone.
SQLite is highly recommended as an alternative. It should be possible to use it like SQL CE, including using LINQ syntax.
Alternatively, you can make a "Windows Phone Silverlight 8.1 app". The Silverlight runtime is still available for Windows Phone 8.1 and SQL CE is still available from Silverlight. We just can't be 100% sure if Silverlight will be supported on Windows Phone 8.2/8.3/9.0/...

How to programmatically detect if Windows 8.1 Update is installed

I'd like to detect from a C# application whether the latest Windows 8.1 Update (KB 2919355) is installed
I haven't been able to find anything on any of microsoft's sites or via google that indicates how one might do this.
Thanks!

That update is actually a "rollup" or a collection of other separate smaller updates. If you go to the Knowledge base page for the update and scroll down to the "File information" you can see the update is actually the combination of the following other updates.
KB2919442
KB2919355
KB2932046
KB2937592
KB2938439
KB2934018
You will then need to either check that all of the above listed updates are applied or the single master update is applied. I am not sure how to do that in C# alone but via the commandline you can just do it by the console command
wmic qfe get hotfixid | find "KB2919355"

I installed Windows 8.1 Update from an MSDN download before it went live on Windows Update. It was distributed as a series of MSU files with a ReadMe. The list of updates in the ReadMe may be useful, if you choose to detect their presence.
Windows 8.1, Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows RT 8.1 Update
Recommended Install Order
1. KB2919442
2. KB2919355
3. KB2932046
4. KB2937592
5. KB2938439
6. KB2949621

This may be the culprit:
Operating system version changes in Windows 8.1 and Windows Server 2012 R2
Manifestation
In Windows 8.1, the GetVersion(Ex) APIs have been deprecated. That means that while you can still call the APIs, if your app does not specifically target Windows 8.1, you will get Windows 8 versioning (6.2.0.0).
Solution
In order to target Windows 8.1, you need to either include the app manifest or include _NT_TARGET_VERSION=$ (_NT_TARGET_VERSION_LATEST) in the source file.
Mode details of the required manifest contents are given in the article.

C# Windows forms app created using Visual Studio 2012 not working on windows xp

I have created a windows forms application using C#.net 4.0 on Visual studio 2012.
App works great on windows 8 and windows 7 but when I try to run the same app on Windows XP I get following error message.
Following are the prerequisites for my app:
1. .net Framework 4.0
2. Windows Installer 4.5
3. ReportViewer 2010
4. MYSQL DB 5.6
5. Visual Basic PowerPack 10
I have installed all these pre-requistes on Windows XP. My 1 click setup installs the application correctly but on application Start up I am receiving error.
I also tried upgrading visual studio 2012 and then rebuilding and publishing the app but still the same error persists.
Following is the screen shot from the Application Event logger
Screenshot from Project's configuration manager
Screenshot from Project Properties
Can anyone suggest me what could be the issue.

If your program icon (or possibly any icons used by your program) has any images that are larger than 64x64 pixels, you can get this error on XP (in System.Drawing).
Check all your icon files and ensure that none contain images larger than 64x64

You Need Service pack 3 for XP and check the EXE build whether it might build for X64 and also check your XP machine is having .Netframework 4.0 change that into AnyCpu and once again build
the EXE and check with XP. and change your framework as .NetFramework 4.0

Are you targeting Mixed Platforms/Any CPU/x86? Can you try different build configurations?
Are you referencing any third party DLL's?
Can you catch and log details of the exception, or does the program fail to execute entirely?
I've had strange issues before when compiling for Mixed/Any CPU, and x86 machines throw a wobbler if the program isn't specifically targetted to x86.