KiCad 8.0 On Windows 7

[PitD]

The Doktor described in his posts a method for Windows 7
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/kicad/kicad-7-0-5-on-windows-7-no-vm-easy!/
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/kicad/kicad-7-0-9-install-on-windows-7-easy!/

In version 7.11 everything works OK.
I have the same problem as fionut in version 8.02

Failed to load library 'C:\Program Files\KiCad\8.0\bin\_eeschema.dll'. (error 127: The specified procedure could not be found.)
Unable to load KIFACE library 'C:\Program Files\KiCad\8.0\bin\_eeschema.dll'.
Error loading editor.

The _eeschema.dll file is in the bin folder.

Everything except the schematic editor works

[The Doktor]

Yes, that's the current problem. I am planning to try to get it working sometime in the next couple of weeks, but as I have little experience in programming, I would have to say don't hold your breath.

Ed

[j0t]

I did managed to get the schematic editor working in Windows7.
The main problem is call to CreateFile2 from _eeschema.dll which is missing in Windows7.
Please check https://github.com/j0t/kicad87/releases/tag/R1 for wrapper _eeschema.dll which tries to resolve this issue.

[DuckDuck1]

Thanks for information. Does it mean that Kicad 8.0.4 installed according to steps by Doktor for Kicad 7 (https://www.eevblog.com/forum/kicad/kicad-7-0-9-install-on-windows-7-easy!/) and  wrapped as you have described, completely works on windows 7?

[j0t]

Yes, it might be installed as suggested by Doktor. The main issues to be resolved in general, were:

• get KiCAD installed somewhere
• make the required version of python working
• make api-ms-win-core-file-l1-2-0.dll available both for python and KiCAD

Now for KiCAD8 we have another issue - a reference to missing import from _eeschema.dll.

Regarding of completeness of this hack- I really don't know, this would require an excessive testing of the whole system.
Anyway, now I can run the schematic editor, open, create and save schemas.

[j0t]

Hello, let me to post some updates here.

Recently I was trying to test the wrapper with fresh KiCAD 8.0.5.

Imagine my surprise to discover that it did not work at all!   
Fortunately, after some debugging I've found out some silly errors.

The fixed version is here https://github.com/j0t/kicad87/releases/tag/R2 (now it was tested with clean KiCAD install)

[DD4DA]

I don't want to warn about the usoing of windows 7 this time - i assume u know the risks using an unsupported OS. An other aspect is that Windows 7, Windows 8.x are unable to activate anymore because microsoft has dropped the activation server in january 2024. So, if you ever needs to reinstall the os, this will not successfully done anymore.
What i don't understand is, why u and others stay's on Window7 instead migrate to Windows 10 or 11? Yes, i aggree that the designer of the desktop seems to be not ever had learned anything about UI-Ergonomics.  The WIN11 is a worse in that point, but it's very modern under the desktop. The last Upgrade to 2402 introduces the kernel code rewritten in RUST. This does not offers memory leaks like C/C++, that was used before. I assume MS will improve the other parts of  Windows in the same wise too. Windows 7 is so huge and slow. It contains so much obsolete code fragments. And in addition, the ciper algorithms are obsolete. In the most case, you are unable to connect to a modern OS like a server. It's unsecure and it's risky using it.
Even windows 10/100 has some unliked things, but you don't be forced using it. You maybe use the buildin firewall and configure them right and in detail. This solution better and more secure as windows 7 ever could be.
Can you explain me why you don't move to win 10 this time? 

[PlainName]

Yes, i aggree that the designer of the desktop seems to be not ever had learned anything about UI-Ergonomics.

Seems you've half answered your question: it is such a pain to use. What goes on under the bonnet is irrelevant if you hate the way you have to drive it.

There is also the forced updates to newer and more crap 'features'. Currently I am banging my head against Google Messages which gets worse and worse with every update (text entry box is so small now only 4 lines of 20 chars is visible when creating a message), but I can't go back to an earlier version which didn't have this problem so much. There web apps that you might use and one time you go to use them and they're different. Nothing works as it should, or web devs (hello Arsetechnica) think spindly black text on mid-grey background is easy to read when the previous black on white was just fine. Windows is like that.

Oh, and don't forget Microsofts push to get us using online resources, and having to have a Microsoft online account, so they can join the pay-per-month masters of greed.

Windows 7 just works. I can't recall having to restore from backup to roll back an unwanted update, and yet Microsoft have consistently blue-screened devices from forced updates you can't avoid.

The question is not really why we stick with W7, but how crazy you have to be to want W10/11. And don't forget that just as you finally get comfortable with it, you'll be forced onto the next version whether you want to go or not. At some point, W10 look look better than the future, and I wonder if you'll remember how you felt about W7.

[SteveThackery]

The question is not really why we stick with W7, but how crazy you have to be to want W10/11.

I completely agree.  Windows 7 is the pinnacle version for mouse/keyboard users. The W7 UI is the result of the WIMP concept being refined over decades.  Microsoft made the terrible decision (in my opinion) to make W8 onwards touch-orientated.  That's fine on a touch screen - I quite like using W11 on my convertible - but it's rubbish on a workstation where the user uses a mouse and keyboard to interact with the OS. Now we must up with giant dialog boxes that take up the entire screen just to print a file, for instance. I honestly think that my mouse mileage is at least twice, maybe three times higher in W10 compared with W7.

Furthermore, it is now 12 years since W8 was launched with its touch-orientated UI, and Microsoft still hasn't got rid of various old W7 components lurking just under the hood, so the UI is a nasty kludge of new and old.  Microsoft should have done what Apple did and left the workstation UI intact for mouse/keyboard users, and launched a separate version for touch devices.

I don't run W7 any more because various of my apps won't run on it. But when I run it up in a virtual machine I'm reminded of just how good it is, and I really miss it.

[SiliconWizard]

Also one fun stuff is that the installer of newer Win still has the Win 7 UI.

[Krotow]

Win7 was best Windows we had, I agree here. However Microsoft think different. Because they solely own the thing, we can only obey or left them. Folks who works with KiCad and aren't tied to "that some tiny crap software which doesn't work outside Windows" can move to Linux now. Just IMHO.

[PlainName]

Unless there has been a massive change of direction in the recent past, Windows still does some things better than Linux. File sharing, for instance, can be more useful. But, of course, if you've never used the enhanced feature then you won't know what you're missing.

I did actually make a serious effort to jump across to Linux once but couldn't decide which flavour might be better (because they are not all perfect, and some are seriously worse than the Metro screwup). So my plan was to pick one and install, but install in a way that I could either install something different over the top, or dual-boot and have my user data remain usable by whichever happened to boot.

Still on Windows...

[nctnico]

Unless there has been a massive change of direction in the recent past, Windows still does some things better than Linux. File sharing, for instance, can be more useful.

I guess you never heard about Fuse fs then ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filesystem_in_Userspace ).  I have using this to share files between Linux systems for over 15 years.

[PlainName]

Does it allow shares under shares? For instance, given this structure:

Code: [Select]

root
    |-- top
          |-- one
          |-- two
Can you share one and two and three (so that one and two appear as normal subdirectories under the top share)? Where each has different access rights to the others.

Consider the situation where you have discrete shares for a bunch of users, plus a super user who access all those shares via a single master share.

[nctnico]

Does it allow shares under shares? For instance, given this structure:

Code: [Select]

root
    |-- top
          |-- one
          |-- two
Can you share one and two and three (so that one and two appear as normal subdirectories under the top share)? Where each has different access rights to the others.

Consider the situation where you have discrete shares for a bunch of users, plus a super user who access all those shares via a single master share.

No problem. A user mounts the remote Linux box through Fuse fs using user + password (over SSH) and can only access files the user & group ownership grants access to. Keep in mind Linux (Unix) has had user & group access rights built in from day one. But this is getting wildly off-topic.

[PlainName]

can only access files the user & group ownership grants access to

No, that's not the question. Would the remote user see:

//PC/top
//PC/one
//PC/two

In my previous experience, it wasn't possible to have sub-shares of shares.

[nctnico]

Yes, mount root as a remote user through fuse fs. User can see the directories but only access the ones the rights permit.

[PlainName]

Not sure I understand that. I did a search for mounting SMB shares via fuse but every result seemed to be using fuse to access a remote filesystem, not the reverse (that is, making shares on the linux machine available to remote Windows users).

[SteveThackery]

Folks who works with KiCad and aren't tied to "that some tiny crap software which doesn't work outside Windows" can move to Linux now. Just IMHO.

I'm going to say something controversial, but I am completely sincere. I've tried to move to Linux several times now, especially since Microsoft abandoned W7. But I just can't do it because, in general, Linux apps are crap and I hate using them.

Almost all the apps are open source, and the problem with so much open source stuff is that it looks like it was written thirty years ago (because it often was) and hasn't had a good polish since. Clunky and ugly user interfaces with crude graphics are the norm. I've tried every open source office suite available on Linux, and they all either look shit or fail to implement some really basic functionality. Same with photo and graphics editors, vector drawing tools, audio and video editors..... Yes, you can always get the job done, be it a 200,000 word document, a video, a CAD design, but I never really enjoy using Linux apps because they just feel so clunky.

It's a shame because I like using Linux (I mostly stick to Mint these days) because it avoids the schizophrenic "Am I a desktop OS? Or am I a mobile OS?" nonsense that Microsoft has foisted on us with Windows. Oh, but the quality of Windows applications (and those for MacOS) are on a different planet compared with Linux programs.

[John B]

Linux programs can have a "look" depending on whether they based around a KDE or a GTK framework, or their own UI wrapped in a window.

Pretty much everything I use on Linux is cross platform, Windows, Mac and Linux.

Brave Browser, Firefox, REAPER for audio, GIMP for pictures, and of course KiCAD.

Honestly, trying to keep KiCAD chugging along on ancient windows releases is a band aid. How do you keep your other programs up to date? Brave stopped supporting windows 8.1 years ago.

I could probably take a blank computer, install linux of choice (Mint is fine, but something like Fedora is a better choice), install KiCAD as a flatpak and have everything up and running in ~20 mins. Everything is up to date, no fuss.

[SteveThackery]

Honestly, trying to keep KiCAD chugging along on ancient windows releases is a band aid. How do you keep your other programs up to date? Brave stopped supporting windows 8.1 years ago.

I could probably take a blank computer, install linux of choice (Mint is fine, but something like Fedora is a better choice), install KiCAD as a flatpak and have everything up and running in ~20 mins. Everything is up to date, no fuss.

Just to be clear, I'm running a mix of W10 and W11 on my various computers for the very reason you say: compatibility with the current versions of my favourite apps. W7 runs in a VM and I play with it mostly to remind myself of how good Windows once was.

By the way, I've never got an install of Linux down to 20 minutes. The first thing every Linux I've ever installed does is download a monster load of updates for the OS and all the apps, which funnily enough is exactly what Windows does and gets mercilessly slagged off for.  But for some reason Linux users insist Linux can do no wrong.  As for me, I think Linux and Windows have much more in common than different, and anyway, they are just operating systems, FFS. Like, who the fuck cares?  All the work gets done in the apps, not the OS. Its the apps that matter, and unfortunately many, many Linux apps are clunky, old fashioned and ugly.  Apple apps take the biscuit, followed (very) closely by Windows apps, with Linux apps puffing along in last place.

Oh, when I'm building a Windows or Linux machine from scratch I allow myself half a day, but in practice it typically takes a couple of hours, maybe a bit less, for each of them.  I don't think I've ever got close to 20 minutes.

[The Doktor]

Wow, this post has given me something to give thanks for on Thanksgiving! I was actually coming on to post that I had given up on making this work, I have very little skill as a programmer, and my efforts so far had brought me nothing but frustration and waste a lot of my time. Instead I see somebody called j0t has solved the problem very nicely. I never even got close, and I don't like to keep fighting a losing fight.

BTW, I just tried his wrapper on version 8.0.6 and it works fine on that as well. I have already patched all the files so they no longer say "unsupported operating system" each time you load them. Now that somebody has it working, I will put together a package in the next few days which patches all the files, deals with the DLL and wrapper, and if possible includes a registry file so that you will be able to click on version 8 projects and have them automatically open just like they should.

DD4DA, the activation servers being gone is no problem for Windows 7, there are simple activation cracks out there for everything from Windows 2000 up to the latest version 11, I know because I've tried many of them and they work well. As for security issues with Windows 7, I am sure you are correct that it is not as secure as the newer OSs, but that doesn't seem to be a problem. I am writing a server here that is constantly connected to the public Internet, it runs Windows 7, never a problem. I also have a few other Windows 7 machines myself, and I have several friends who do not wish to upgrade, none of us have ever had any infections. Intelligence about opening emails from people you don't know, or visiting shady sites, goes a long way to protect yourself. As to improvements in Windows 10/11, yes they are definitely better under the hood, I don't say night and day, but there are definitely improvements.  However, I still prefer the looks of Windows 7. But that is not the reason I have not switched. I will say that in the user interface there are several things that are objectively worse in Windows 10 than seven, and even worse yet in Windows 11. There are so many places where menu items are just poorly placed. Too many things were some settings are one side of the screen, and for closely related settings you have to jump all the way to the other side of the screen. And you have less fine control over Windows defender in the newer OSs.

BTW, for any who believe you are forced to use an online account with Windows 11, this is not true. I was recently playing around with The latest version, 24 H2, and it can be set up with an off-line account. It will not present you with the option to do this, but with a few tricks and a magic command, you can still have your off-line account. Also, you can switch back to the old style right-click context menu and the old-style start menu with a couple of pieces of free software. Maybe even get back borders that look like the old Aero glass in Windows 7. I have not tested any of these yet for stability, but will be doing so soon.

Unfortunately, I am probably not going to be running Windows 7 on my primary computer much longer. It is still a decent running system, but it's from 2008 and uses DDR2 memory. The old Q9450 processor Is still plenty powerful for anything I do, but I am stuck with 8GB of memory. More than needed for most people, But I have quite a few background programs running, usually have 20 or 30 tabs open in Chrome, several documents open in Acrobat, KiCad open, etc. Sometimes when I turn the voice dictation on, it may take a minute before it starts responding. So I am putting together a new system, using the core ultra 265K and probably 192 GB of RAM. Sadly I don't think I will be able to find drivers for Windows 7 for most of the hardware on the new motherboard, and I am sure that Windows 7 will not know how to deal with the P and E cores. Although, if it is bad enough, I may just use Windows 11 for the host machine and continue using Windows 7 in a VM.