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 December 1 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old link no longer valid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!

[nicolaasjan]

5 hours ago, we3fan said:

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

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 ..

 

Edited 2 hours ago by nicolaasjan

[user57]

hmm i do not know the details but these are 2 different error messages:

"api-ms-win-crt-convert-l1-1-0.dll  was not found" -> this means that dll/file was not found

"ucrtbase.mbstowcs could not be found in the dynamic library api-ms-win-crt-convert-l1-1-0.dll" -> this means that the dll/file was found but not the function "ucrtbase.mbstowcs" in that dll

ucrtbase refer to the c-runtime (ucrt - Universal C Runtime Library) so you might can give it a try by installing the vc-runtime

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/windows/latest-supported-vc-redist?view=msvc-170

but i do not know if that one needs sp3 - its worth a try but

 

there might also be a different version or modded version of that api-ms-win-crt-convert-l1-1-0.dll - what can give you function maybe if you have one

(these files had different compiles for different os´s of windows) (what could explain why that error message says it found the file but not its function)

if the c-runtime works - a good method to avoid this problem is to ship the vc-runtime with the executable (in this case ytdl)

[Reino]

On 9/2/2025 at 11:04 PM, Reino said:

Have a look at https://rwijnsma.home.xs4all.nl/files/openssl/?C=M;O=A. I've just uploaded v3.5.2. Though I'm on Win11 nowadays, I believe it should work on WinXP.

I've uploaded v3.6.0 (for which my AMD Ryzen AI MAX 385 for the first time did all the hard, and particularly quick, work). Please confirm it works on WinXP.

[davidz]

2 hours ago, nicolaasjan said:

Do you really mean you're on SP3?

Jeez, it turns out that now, for version <yt-dlp_x86_winXP_2025.12.06> to work, you need this “junk” — <Microsoft Visual C++ 2019>, which has to be placed in the same folder! 

 

Since I have no intention of polluting my system with that crap, I just copied all the missing files directly into the folder with <yt-dlp_x86_winXP.exe>

 

But here’s another question: why did version <yt-dlp_x86_winXP_2025.11.25> work perfectly fine without those extra DLLs?

After all, those files are already embedded inside <yt-dlp_x86_winXP.exe>, and when unpacked, everything gets extracted into the TEMP folder anyway!

So what’s the point of this “duplication” now?  

[nicolaasjan]

49 minutes ago, user57 said:

there might also be a different version or modded version of that api-ms-win-crt-convert-l1-1-0.dll - what can give you function maybe if you have one

My version is: 10.0.10586.15 by Microsoft.

And I have Microsoft Visual C++ 2010  x86 Redistributable - 10.0.40219 installed:

https://download.microsoft.com/download/1/6/5/165255E7-1014-4D0A-B094-B6A430A6BFFC/vcredist_x86.exe

Edited 1 minute ago by nicolaasjan