I didn't realise there were so many still using SP2 (why?).
I will consider building the next version with PyInstaller 5.13.2 again.
But do note, that in the future that may not be possible any more, due to the changes they make. Consider upgrading to SP3.
In the meantime, here is a build that should work on SP2.
@davidz, Do you really mean you're on SP3?
Because in my SP3 machine (VM), 2025.12.06.064237 works fine:
[debug] Command-line config: ['-v']
[debug] User config "C:\Documents and Settings\Nico\Application Data\yt-dlp\config.txt": ['--rm-cache-dir', '--console-title', '--add-metadata', '--embed-thumbnail', '--convert-thumbnails', 'jpg', '--js-runtimes', 'quickjs', '--ppa', 'ffmpeg:-metadata synopsis=""', '-o', '~/Bureaublad/%(title)s.%(ext)s', '-S', 'res:1080,vcodec:avc,acodec:m4a', '--sponsorblock-remove', 'all', '-N', '6']
[debug] Encodings: locale cp1252, fs utf-8, pref cp1252, out cp1252 (No VT), error cp1252 (No VT), screen cp1252 (No VT)
[debug] yt-dlp version nicolaasjan/yt-dlp@2025.12.06.064237 (winXP_x86_exe*)
[debug] Python 3.11.4 (CPython x86 32bit) - Windows-XP-5.1.2600-SP3 (OpenSSL 3.5.2 5 Aug 2025)
[debug] exe versions: ffmpeg N-121824-g775b102182-WINXP (fdk,setts), ffprobe N-121824-g775b102182-WINXP, phantomjs 1.9.8
[debug] Optional libraries: Cryptodome-3.23.0, brotli-1.2.0, certifi-2025.11.12, mutagen-1.47.0, requests-2.32.5, sqlite3-3.50.4, urllib3-2.6.0, websockets-15.0.1, yt_dlp_ejs-0.3.1
[debug] JS runtimes: quickjs-2025-09-13
[debug] Proxy map: {}
[debug] Request Handlers: urllib, requests, websockets
[debug] Plugin directories: none
[debug] Loaded 1853 extractors
Removing cache dir C:\Documents and Settings\Nico/.cache\yt-dlp ..