Who here has a Youtube-DL compile for WinXP?

[VistaLover]

3 hours ago, nicolaasjan said:

I have no idea how that might have happened...

... Well, this isn't a very reassuring answer, you do realise that  ...

3 hours ago, nicolaasjan said:

What is that file supposed to do.

Don't know ; perhaps @user57 is on the right track on this  (or even @cmalex, safe may he be, knows more  ); the question to be asked is why did it magically appear in the latest yt-dlp WinXP compiles, whereas it wasn't present (needed?) all that time before? ...

3 hours ago, nicolaasjan said:

Can it do any harm?

Can't tell; my AV solution gave it a "clean bill of health"  ; you can try to see if the WinXP packages launch and function OK WITHOUT it, then take the necessary steps to remove it altogether; I'm not being paranoid (I think ), but I'd rather not have it there, if it isn't indispensable...

Best festive wishes ...

[nicolaasjan]

Quote

I'm hesitant to build with the "modern" PyInstaller on XP.

I did it for testing (manually applying 3dyd's changes to the source of official PyInstaller 6.17.0) and converting into a wheel (built with 32bit toolchain from here on Windows 10).

pyinstaller-6.17.0-py3-none-any.whl  (for XP)

pyinst-6.17.0_yt-dlp_x86_XP.7z

Edited Monday at 06:27 PM by nicolaasjan

[VistaLover]

On 11/30/2025 at 9:16 AM, nicolaasjan said:

(waiting for 6.17.0 now...)

On 12/1/2025 at 7:36 PM, nicolaasjan said:

I did it for testing (manually applying 3dyd's changes to the source of official PyInstaller 6.17.0) and converting into a wheel (built with 32bit toolchain from here on Windows 10).

pyinstaller-6.17.0-py3-none-any.whl  (for XP)

On 11/30/2025 at 12:51 AM, VistaLover said:

For the Vista+(aka Win7) builds, your PyInstaller fork v6.17 came just in time  : 

https://github.com/nicolaasjan/pyinstaller-builds/releases/tag/6.17.0

New 6.17.0 releases by 3dyd  (and it's a shame every new release overwrites the previous one  ; not a good practice if "things" break and one needs to revert ) :

https://3dyd.github.io/pyinstaller-builds/

Edited Friday at 02:24 PM by VistaLover
old link no longer valid

[VistaLover]

17 hours ago, VistaLover said:

(and it's a shame every new release overwrites the previous one  ; not a good practice if "things" break and one needs to revert ) :

https://3dyd.github.io/pyinstaller-builds/

... It would appear "someone"  is reading this thread  ; disregard above link (it now 404s), here's the new one: 

https://github.com/3dyd/pyinstaller-builds/releases/tag/latest

(with previous releases (6.16.0) reinstated  )

Edited Friday at 02:25 PM by VistaLover

[nicolaasjan]

The latest version of my yt-dlp is now built with PyInstaller 6.17.0.

Unfortunately it is not compatible with Windows XP SP2 any more (got a personal message from a forum member).

Quote

The procedure entry point ucrtbase.mbstowcs could not be found in the dynamic library api-ms-win-crt-convert-l1-1-0.dll

[we3fan]

1 hour ago, nicolaasjan said:

The latest version of my yt-dlp is now built with PyInstaller 6.17.0.

Unfortunately it is not compatible with Windows XP SP2 any more (got a personal message from a forum member).

Hi nicolaasjan,

I still use XP SP2 for now, I tested the latest yt-dlp 2025.12.06 and when I try to download a video it says: "...  api-ms-win-crt-convert-l1-1-0.dll  was not found."  hmm, it doesn't work with any command I try. (example:  yt-dlp --version )

Can you please keep yt-dlp be able to work on XP SP2 if possible?

I would also like to say a big THANKS to you nicolaasjan for all your hard work with yt-dlp and making video download possible on older OSs.

[davidz]

Yes, I confirm: version yt-dlp_x86_winXP.exe (2025.12.06.064237) does not work on Windows XP SP3!  
Version 2025.11.25.144622 worked fine!