As you probably all know, Windows 7 has been dead for a few years already. Microsoft ended its support, as well as Windows 8. It's no longer being updated, it's open to all kind of vulnerabilities discovered today, unsafe to use, bla bla bla, I know all of that.

Yet, there are still a few users of Windows 7 out there and as time goes by, more and more programs (including games) no longer run on it for various reasons. One of them is the use of DirectX 12 which requires Windows 10 at least, some require the use of other middleware like Qt which no longer run on Windows 7 since version 6, while version 5.13 still did. Or simply they are made in such a way that they inherently are not compatible with it.

Luckily there is a couple of tools which might help with that and give those users a bit of relief.

The goal of this thread is not to incite people to keep using this old OS or to prevent them from migrating to another one, it's just there to help them push their old OS to the limit (with limited success) and help as much as possible. It is not meant to imply that Windows 7 is a future-proof OS.

So here is a couple of tools I found out which I tested and provided some results :

The first one is vkd3d-proton, it provides a Direct3D 12 implementation on various OS, including Windows 7 and Linux. That way, some DirectX 12 exclusive titles might run without the need of Windows 10+.

The second one is VxKex. It's a set of various API extensions for Windows 7 that allow some Windows 8, 8.1 and 10-exclusive applications to run on Windows 7.

The third one is qt6windows7. As its name implies, it tries to make Qt6 run on Windows 7. It provides replacement dlls for the original ones.

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What about the results ?

Well, I tried to run some emulator programs that no longer worked on Windows 7. And the result is not that bad !

I tried Citra and Yuzu (which have just been discontinued as I'm writing this). Citra's last version that supported Win7 was the Nightly 1898 before they switched to Qt6. And with VxKex alone, I was able to run the latest version : the 2104. There were 2 flaws however : the first one is that once the emulation started, I could no longer move the window with the mouse (I had to alt-tab to regain the mouse focus), and the second one is that the Vulkan backend did not work and crashed the emulator, but OpenGl worked fine. Not that much of a big deal.
For Yuzu, the last Win7-compatible version was the 990. And with VxKex again, I was able to run the latest one, the 1734, without any problem.

I also tried the Dolphin emulator with some limited success. The last version that supported Win7 was the 16391, before they switched to Qt6. With qt6windows7, I was able to run the 16709. Not much of an improvement, but with VxKex on top of that, I was able to run the 17260. This is still far from the latest release (21088 as I'm writing this), but it's still better than nothing.

For the lol, I also tried to run Star Citizen, but to no avail. Even the launcher refuses to run.

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Also keep in mind that these are still young projects. With time, the compatibility might increase.

If you have other similar projects that might help Windows 7 users to drag behind a bit less, feel free to share them here and comment on your success or failure with them.

Very interesting thread.
From what I understand DX12 cannot be run in 8.1 (sorry I know nothing about 8 version) as only Windows 7 received updates to be able to run a couple of games, including CyberPunk 2077.

Yes you're right, DX12 requires Win10, not Win8. It was DX11.1 and 11.2 that required 8 and 8.1. Thank you for correcting this.

Question: This sounds like a very complicated/convoluted way of supporting an entire OS by a single support beam.

Have you considered Linux+Wine, which supports all these things natively and with far less fuss?

I'm using Linux for my laptop. Still, it's not that easy to re-learn everything from scratch and get used to a new system.

Sure it is. Especially in Window Managers like IceWm.

RE: DirextX 12

I *think* it is possible now to install DX12 on Windows 7. Microsoft made a last second turnaround shortly before the support end of W7. However, it is not a straightforward process to install it.

I haven't tried it myself, because i never had to. (I'm still on Win7 myself, but only as long as it takes to 100% transition to Ubuntu Linux.) But maybe someone else is curious/brave enough to try it. For more info, see the following post on the Microsoft Development Blog:

Porting DirectX 12 games to Windows 7
(posted August 21st, 2019)

This itself is a follow-up to:

World of Warcraft uses DirectX 12 running on Windows 7
(posted March 12th, 2019)

There are different lifecycles end dates for different kinds of Windows 7 versions. For Windows Embedded POSReady 7 there are ESUs (Extended Security Updates) until October 2024.
Similiar to Windows XP with the right knowledge you can use that for regular Windows 7 version, too.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/faq/extended-security-updates

Here are my contributions for Windows 7:

UefiSeven
https://github.com/manatails/uefiseven

UefiSeven is an efi module that enables Windows 7 to boot under UEFI Class 3 systems

W7RevivalTools - Cert Updater
https://github.com/TesterMachine/W7RevivalTools (Main Page)
https://github.com/TesterMachine/W7RevivalTools/tree/main/Root%20Certs/Update%20Cert%20Root%20Scripts/Cet%20Updater

Tool to update Root certificates

There are also (modified) drivers for Windows 7 to run NVMe SSD as well as USB 3.x support.

NVMe SSD
https://winraid.level1techs.com/t/guide-how-to-get-win7-clean-installed-onto-an-nvme-ssd/33363/1
https://winraid.level1techs.com/t/recommended-ahci-raid-and-nvme-drivers/28310

USB 3.x
https://winraid.level1techs.com/t/solution-win7-8-1-drivers-for-usb-3-0-3-1-controllers-of-new-amd-chipset-systems/33603
https://winraid.level1techs.com/t/solution-win7-drivers-for-usb-3-0-3-1-controllers-of-new-intel-chipset-systems/33536

The forum at MDL has extensive knowledge for Windows 7
https://forums.mydigitallife.net/forums/windows-7.16

As previously mentioned, only a selected few games work with DX12 under Windows 7. I recall Cyberpunk 2077 being one of them at launch.
If memory isn't failing as usual it requires updates from Microsoft, updated video driver and being supported by the game itself.
From what I understand the implementation is more of a wrapper (like, say, dgvodoo 2), than native, unlike Vulkan wich works flawlessly on both 7 and 8.1.

I'm not so sure if a Window Manager solves all the issues regarding compatibility with Windows/Unix.

To be honest, I expect most of the people who are "switching to Linux" due the end of support for Windows 10 (the LTSC version is 2029), do exactly the same as the people who "switch" when Windows 7 support ended: being frustrated and start using Windows again.
Not saying there's something wrong with it, just use whatever you prefer.

My main desktop is still on Windows 8.1 and, while I got a new SSD for Windows 10, I don't use it that much. I may give a try to a couple of tools. VxKex really picked my interest and may solve a issue or three I'm having :)

Maybe not compatibility, but that's what Wine is for. And more to the point, IceWM was picked out of a hat because it can be set up to look the most like (the last competent versions of) Windows while staying mostly the hell out of the way.

A little more feedback about the tools i talked about earlier.

I tried Duckstation. The last Win7-compatible version was the 0.1-5624. I tried later ones without any success. No tool helped.

I tried PCSX2. The last Win7-compatible version was the 1.7.0-1419. Later versions crash because of a problem with dxgi.dll. However, it is possible to circumvent this in 2 ways. The first is to put another dxgi.dll than the one from the system, directly into the emulator folder (either one from DXVK or Reshade. The second is to use VxKex. Either way, I was able to run the 1.7.3581 (the wxWidgets one, not the qt one, even with qt6windows, it doesn't work). Later versions don't work. This is an improvement, even if it's still far from the latest version of PCSX2 (1.7.5614 as I am writing this).

I tried the latest Playnite version (10.32 as I'm writing this). No success with VxKex.

Dolphin's latest version (the 21261 as I'm writing this) works fine under Windows 7 with VxKex providing you're using this dll (the 6.3.9600.16384 x64 one at the bottom of the page) in the emulator's directory. The only drawback is that the emulator crashes when quitting it, but it seems to work fine apart from that.

RPCS3's latest version (0.0.31-16295) works perfectly fine with VxKex.
XEMU's latest version (0.7.120) works perfectly fine with VxKex.

Freetube whose last version (0.20.0) is no longer compatible with Win 7 works perfectly fine with VxKex.

Some news about VxKex.

vxiiduu, the author of this program has stopped his project suddenly without any explanation.
Some people have tried to impersonate him with a fake page claiming real life problems in order to receive donations. Don't fall for it.
His github page has been archived by i486 here but there likely won't be newer versions unfortunately.

There is a fork however from dotexe here who is actively working on it. But I had some mixed results with it as his fork broke compatibility with freetube which worked flawlessly with the original project from vxiiduu.

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About RPCS3 :

Since version 0.0.34-17177, RPCS3 is using Qt 6.8.1 which is no longer working with VxKex. However, it is still possible to run the latest version (0.0.34-17319 as I'm writing this) thanks to qt6windows7. You just have to update RPCS3, apply VxKex if not done already, download qt6windows7 x64 6.8.1, then go to the RPCS3\qt6\plugins\platforms directory, and replace qwindows.dll with the one from qt6windows7 in the platforms subdirectory.
Then RPCS3 will work again without any problem (for now).