YouTube under Windows XP - Downloaders, players and browser support

[Reino]

4 hours ago, AstroSkipper said:

his old Pentium 3 SSE computer has died

AMD Athlon XP 3200+.

[AstroSkipper]

1 hour ago, Reino said:

AMD Athlon XP 3200+.

Alright! I must have mixed it up. Sorry for that! BTW, my other Windows XP computer is equipped exactly with this CPU on an ASUS A7N8X-E Deluxe motherboard. And it's still alive. 

Edited March 10 by AstroSkipper

[AstroSkipper]

Pre-release of ytBATCH for Windows XP - A fork of ytBATCH by AstroSkipper

ytBATCH is a YouTube video and music downloader script (actually rather a batch script ensemble) developed by eppic on GitHub: https://github.com/eppic/ytBATCH. Therefore, credits to eppic for his great work! Unfortunately, the original ytBATCH is not compatible with Windows XP as it uses more recent versions of youtube-dl and yt-dlp, and even failed to download any of these releases under Windows XP due to commands which do not work under this OS. Additionally, it needs ffmpeg which can't be downloaded any longer by this script, either. I changed and added a lot of code inside the batch files of this script ensemble to get it working under Windows XP. For this purpose, I implemented the use of youtube-dl and yt-dlp releases created by @nicolaasjan which will now automatically be downloaded by ytBATCH and updated when needed. At this point, logically credits to @nicolaasjan for his great releases! Furthermore, I implemented the last ffmpeg release in version 7.1-2362 created by @Reino which will now also automatically be downloaded by my ytBATCH fork. And therefore, credits to @Reino for his great releases! An updating of this version by ytBATCH is not needed as @Reino unfortunately abandoned creating XP-compatible ffmpeg releases. To make the download of these files by ytBATCH working again under Windows XP, I added the last XP-compatible version of wget to this package. Additionally, I inserted the 7-Zip command line tool in my package for unpacking the downloaded files. When starting the original ytBATCH script, another issue happens under Windows XP. The script needs the DOS command CHOICE which is not part of ytBATCH and doesn't exist under Windows XP by default. At least, it is the case on my Windows XP installation. Therefore, I added the choice.com file to this package. All in all, I changed many different things but now, ytBATCH is working fine under Windows XP.  The advantages of ytBATCH are the low consumption of resources, the high download speed, the custom settings such as preselecting the video and audio formats, their quality, the download of subtitles, the embedding of metadata and thumbnails and so on, and most notably the possibility of adding command line options to youtube-dl or yt-dlp which all can be saved inside ytBATCH. I personally love this script ensemble which can be modified to the needs of the users at any time since batch scripts are fully editable. I rebranded my fork of ytBATCH and called it ytBATCH for Windows XP. Most probably, it will also run under other OSes like Windows Vista or Windows 7 but I didn't test it. The current version of my fork is based on the latest ytBATCH version 2.9.2. Here are some screenshots:






And here is the download link for the pre-release of ytBATCH for Windows XP 1.0 (aka 2.9.2): https://www.mediafire.com/file/6c9hfkfpiwextf0/ytBATCH_for_Windows_XP_2.9.2.7z/file

The use of ytBATCH for Windows XP is actually self-explanatory and well documented on ytBATCH's homepage: https://github.com/eppic/ytBATCH. Extract the downloaded archive file to a location of your choice and start the ytBATCH.bat file located in the main folder. A prompt appears asking to install ytBATCH. You can now either install ytBATCH to AppData and generate a shortcut or keep ytBATCH as a portable programme. I personally prefer the latter. The download of all necessary files will then automatically start. All files will be unpacked and saved in a freshly created exe subfolder. I have to mention at this point that the user of such scripts should not only be able to click with the mouse. This script is mainly controlled by the keyboard. Solely the YouTube link to be downloaded can also be inserted using the mouse. My recommendation is to check all options inside this script by pressing corresponding keys to set it optimally. I did that, and it works simply great, especially on my old, weak computer.  To make even better use of it, you should be a bit familiar with youtube-dl and yt-dlp. The latter is documented in detail on its homepage https://github.com/nicolaasjan/yt-dlp. Any opinions, questions or experiences on my fork are of course welcome here in my thread. If you encounter any issues with my fork, please post it only here and not on GitHub! This fork is unofficial and not supported on GitHub. In any case, I hope ytBATCH for Windows XP can be useful for YouTube users under Windows XP.

Greetings from Germany, AstroSkipper

P.S.1: If ytBATCH should be updated on GitHub at some point (the last update was in June of 2022), you are well advised not to perform such an update, as otherwise all my changes would be overwritten, and ytBATCH for Windows XP would become non-functional under Windows XP. To be honest, there is no reason for such an update under Windows XP. Maybe, I will deactivate this function in ytBATCH for Windows XP in general in a further release. 

P.S.2: I have changed the version number assignment. Consider my pre-release ytBATCH for Windows XP 2.9.2 as version 1.0! 
This means: ytBATCH for Windows XP 2.9.2 = ytBATCH for Windows XP 1.0.

Edited April 6 by AstroSkipper
Update of content

[jumper]

Any minimum CPU requirements?

 

[AstroSkipper]

1 hour ago, jumper said:

Any minimum CPU requirements?

 

My Windows XP computer is equipped with a single core Pentium 4 Northwood 2.8 GHz CPU and no problems here. As long as the computer is able to download files from YouTube, it should work. If your CPU is only equipped with the SSE instructions set, you should use youtube-dl instead of yt-dlp. This can be set under Preferences. Watching YouTube videos is another matter, but ytBATCH for Windows XP has nothing to do with that. 

Edited March 20 by AstroSkipper
Update of content

[jumper]

So SSE2 is required. For SSE, modification is needed. How is that done?

> This can be set under Preferences.

Thanks!

 

Edited March 21 by jumper

[AstroSkipper]

1 hour ago, jumper said:

So SSE2 is required.

Did I say that?  I said:

1 hour ago, AstroSkipper said:

If your CPU is only equipped with the SSE instructions set, you should use youtube-dl instead of yt-dlp. This can be set under Preferences.

Look at the second screenshot under (Y)! This is the Preferences window, and there you can change the use of yt-dlp to youtube-dl. The latter is a YouTube downloader compatible with SSE only CPUs. When pressing the key Y and setting the value to youtube-dl, the youtube-dl.zip file will be automatically downloaded, unpacked and saved. Then, you can use it. And to finalize the SSE topic, the ffmpeg release from @Reino is also SSE compatible. So, there shouldn't really be any problems.

Edited March 20 by AstroSkipper
Update of content

[AstroSkipper]

On 3/20/2025 at 12:15 AM, AstroSkipper said:

Maybe, I will deactivate this function in ytBATCH for Windows XP in general in a further release. 

I already modified my fork ytBATCH for Windows XP. I added new entries to the main window, removed the autoupdate function of ytBATCH completely, changed the update function for ytBATCH to a simple version check one and removed all superfluous code. Now, it is no longer possible to accidentally update ytBATCH, which would only render my fork non-functional.  At the moment, the batch script ensemble is again in test mode. 

Edited March 23 by AstroSkipper
Update of content

[AstroSkipper]

On 3/21/2025 at 9:51 PM, AstroSkipper said:

I already modified my fork ytBATCH for Windows XP. I added new entries to the main window, removed the autoupdate function of ytBATCH completely, changed the update function for ytBATCH to a simple version check one and removed all superfluous code. Now, it is no longer possible to accidentally update ytBATCH, which would only render my fork non-functional.  At the moment, the batch script ensemble is again in test mode. 

While testing my further developed fork ytBATCH for Windows XP, I also tried to use youtube-dl for downloading YouTube videos and audio files. Unfortunately, without success. Eppic, the author of ytBATCH, uses the same command line options for both downloaders youtube-dl and yt-dlp. That does not make any sense.  The way of setting subtitles internally, for example, only works with yt-dlp, but not at all with youtube-dl. The command line options for subtitles are unfortunately different. youtube-dl uses the command line option --write-sub where in contrast yt-dlp uses the --write-subs option. Their negations are also different. Therefore, I have changed the script ensemble considerably and made the internal setting of flags, if different in both downloaders, dependent on the downloader that is currently active. The same applies to the youtube-dl.conf configuration file. Eppic uses one and the same file for both YouTube downloaders, although the command line options are by no means identical. This is not expedient.  I therefore have now changed this too and assigned a separate configuration file to each downloader. Now, each of the downloaders can be assigned its command line options stored in its own configuration file.  These are major changes to the script files, and the development and testing phase continues. 

Edited March 26 by AstroSkipper
Update of content

[AstroSkipper]

@nicolaasjan As part of my further development and testing of ytBATCH for Windows XP, I have also thoroughly tested your two releases youtube-dl and yt-dlp. As already reported, yt-dlp works great and can download video files and audio files easily from YouTube. Unfortunately, this is not the case with youtube-dl. Even with the very latest version 2025.3.26.0, I cannot download video or audio files from YouTube. I have tested this link as one of many: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffcitRgiNDs
Here are two screenshots, the first one with a successful download via yt-dlp and the second one with an unsuccessful download via youtube.dl:





Is youtube-dl currently not working with YouTube? Or is there anything else to consider?  Of course, I know that the development of youtube-dl had many problems in the past, but I thought it would work again. I really tried different links but none of them are working with youtube-dl. In a lot of cases, I even got the message 403 Forbidden. This is of course bad news especially for those using a computer with a SSE only CPU.

Greetings, AstroSkipper

 

Edited March 27 by AstroSkipper
Update of content

[AstroSkipper]

And to give you an impression of the state of development, here is a screenshot of the current Main Menu of ytBATCH for Windows XP:



Of course, this is just a small insight into my project. The internal changes are much bigger and of course more important. However, I thought a little colour would make the DOS windows less boring. Frankly, this is all retro at its best.
And @nicolaasjan, here you can see that I do not forget to give credits to creators for their work.  This is a screenshot of the freshly created About ytBATCH for Windows XP window:



When I look at my fork, I'm reminded wistfully of my old DOS days.  

Edited March 26 by AstroSkipper
Update of content

[AstroSkipper]

On 3/20/2025 at 12:15 AM, AstroSkipper said:

Pre-release of ytBATCH for Windows XP - A fork of ytBATCH by AstroSkipper

ytBATCH is a YouTube video and music downloader script (actually rather a batch script ensemble) developed by eppic on GitHub: https://github.com/eppic/ytBATCH. Therefore, credits to eppic for his great work! Unfortunately, the original ytBATCH is not compatible with Windows XP as it uses more recent versions of youtube-dl and yt-dlp, and even failed to download any of these releases under Windows XP due to commands which do not work under this OS. Additionally, it needs ffmpeg which can't be downloaded any longer by this script, either. I changed and added a lot of code inside the batch files of this script ensemble to get it working under Windows XP. For this purpose, I implemented the use of youtube-dl and yt-dlp releases created by @nicolaasjan which will now automatically be downloaded by ytBATCH and updated when needed. At this point, logically credits to @nicolaasjan for his great releases! Furthermore, I implemented the last ffmpeg release in version 7.1-2362 created by @Reino which will now also automatically be downloaded by my ytBATCH fork. And therefore, credits to @Reino for his great releases! An updating of this version by ytBATCH is not needed as @Reino unfortunately abandoned creating XP-compatible ffmpeg releases. To make the download of these files by ytBATCH working again under Windows XP, I added the last XP-compatible version of wget to this package. Additionally, I inserted the 7-Zip command line tool in my package for unpacking the downloaded files. When starting the original ytBATCH script, another issue happens under Windows XP. The script needs the DOS command CHOICE which is not part of ytBATCH and doesn't exist under Windows XP by default. At least, it is the case on my Windows XP installation. Therefore, I added the choice.com file to this package. All in all, I changed many different things but now, ytBATCH is working fine under Windows XP.  The advantages of ytBATCH are the low consumption of resources, the high download speed, the custom settings such as preselecting the video and audio formats, their quality, the download of subtitles, the embedding of metadata and thumbnails and so on, and most notably the possibility of adding command line options to youtube-dl or yt-dlp which all can be saved inside ytBATCH. I personally love this script ensemble which can be modified to the needs of the users at any time since batch scripts are fully editable. I rebranded my fork of ytBATCH and called it ytBATCH for Windows XP. Most probably, it will also run under other OSes like Windows Vista or Windows 7 but I didn't test it. The current version of my fork is based on the latest ytBATCH version 2.9.2. Here are some screenshots:






And here is the download link for the pre-release of ytBATCH for Windows XP 2.9.2: https://www.mediafire.com/file/6c9hfkfpiwextf0/ytBATCH_for_Windows_XP_2.9.2.7z/file

The use of ytBATCH for Windows XP is actually self-explanatory and well documented on ytBATCH's homepage: https://github.com/eppic/ytBATCH. Extract the downloaded archive file to a location of your choice and start the ytBATCH.bat file located in the main folder. A prompt appears asking to install ytBATCH. You can now either install ytBATCH to AppData and generate a shortcut or keep ytBATCH as a portable programme. I personally prefer the latter. The download of all necessary files will then automatically start. All files will be unpacked and saved in a freshly created exe subfolder. I have to mention at this point that the user of such scripts should not only be able to click with the mouse. This script is mainly controlled by the keyboard. Solely the YouTube link to be downloaded can also be inserted using the mouse. My recommendation is to check all options inside this script by pressing corresponding keys to set it optimally. I did that, and it works simply great, especially on my old, weak computer.  To make even better use of it, you should be a bit familiar with youtube-dl and yt-dlp. The latter is documented in detail on its homepage https://github.com/nicolaasjan/yt-dlp. Any opinions, questions or experiences on my fork are of course welcome here in my thread. If you encounter any issues with my fork, please post it only here and not on GitHub! This fork is unofficial and not supported on GitHub. In any case, I hope ytBATCH for Windows XP can be useful for YouTube users under Windows XP.

Greetings from Germany, AstroSkipper

P.S.: If ytBATCH should be updated on GitHub at some point (the last update was in June of 2022), you are well advised not to perform such an update, as otherwise all my changes would be overwritten, and ytBATCH for Windows XP would become non-functional under Windows XP. To be honest, there is no reason for such an update under Windows XP. Maybe, I will deactivate this function in ytBATCH for Windows XP in general in a further release. 

I have changed the title of my publication of ytBATCH for Windows XP. It is currently to be understood as a pre-release. My fork has moved further and further away from the original script and is becoming more and more independent. Therefore, I havel changed the version number assignment. Consider my pre-release ytBATCH for Windows XP 2.9.2 as version 1.0! 
This means: ytBATCH for Windows XP 2.9.2 = ytBATCH for Windows XP 1.0.

Although I have made ytBATCH compatible with Windows XP, some things do not work. This is due to the fact that the algorithm in the original ytBATCH script was not quite correct or not really thought through and programmed to the end. The original script from eppic has the following shortcomings:

• The youtube-dl and yt-dlp downloaders are not considered and used separately.
• The download of subtitles can only work with yt-dlp, but not with youtube-dl.
• The script would not work with youtube-dl in general.
• The queue does not work at all.
• A globally defined variable causes problems in some cases.
• Various bugs in various places.
• Some actions are illogical or incomplete.

This means that the original ytBATCH script only has limited functionality and won't work at its fullest on its targeted, higher OSes.  I also have the feeling that eppic has given up its ytBATCH script in the meantime, as it has not been updated for three years.
Updated on 29.3.2025: Today, I have found this on eppic's GitHub page:

Quote

This also means I won't be working on ytBATCH any longer.

THIS REPO IS NOT ACTIVELY MAINTAINED

So, my feeling was correct. Nonetheless, eppic's script ensemble ytBATCH is great and worth developing further. 

In the meanwhile, I have already found the reasons for these issues listed above and was able to correct all of them.  I have considerably changed the algorithm and modified or rewritten a lot of code. I also added new functions to make the script more informative and effective. Including a new window management and styling. Unfortunately, I can only test yt-dlp because @nicolaasjan's youtube-dl does not work with YouTube at the moment.  However, the final release of ytBATCH for Windows XP will be prepared for the return of youtube-dl, whenever this will be. 

Cheers, AstroSkipper 

P.S.: Unfortunately, this all means that those using Windows XP on a computer with an SSE-only CPU will not be able to download video or audio files from YouTube using ytBATCH for Windows XP or other programmes also depending on youtube-dl at this time. 

Edited March 29 by AstroSkipper
Update of content

[nicolaasjan]

On 3/28/2025 at 4:51 PM, AstroSkipper said:

Unfortunately, I can only test yt-dlp because @nicolaasjan's youtube-dl does not work with YouTube at the moment.  

Not only my youtube-dl.

The official one doesn't work either.

[youtube] PD-MdiUm1_Y: Downloading player 20830619
WARNING: [youtube] PD-MdiUm1_Y: Unable to decode n-parameter: expect download to be blocked or throttled

See issue #33102

[AstroSkipper]

2 hours ago, nicolaasjan said:

Not only my youtube-dl.

The official one doesn't work either.

[youtube] PD-MdiUm1_Y: Downloading player 20830619
WARNING: [youtube] PD-MdiUm1_Y: Unable to decode n-parameter: expect download to be blocked or throttled

See issue #33102

Thanks for confirmation and clarification!  So, we'll have to wait until it is fixed if it is possible at all.

[AstroSkipper]

@nicolaasjan Thanks for updating your release of youtube-dl to version 2025.04.01! I have tested it with my fork ytBATCH for Windows XP, and it is working again with YouTube. . Now, I am able to deeply test my latest version in all its functionality. 

Edited April 2 by AstroSkipper