Kicad 9 on Windows 7, no install script - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: PlainName
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 05, 2025, 10:33:29 pm
content: First, many thanks to those who spent time and effort on getting Kicad 8 to run on Windows 7. Very much appreciated and helped to keep interest upBut since then things have moved on, and now you can do it without a script:The trick is to use VxKex, which basically fakes 4 API calls that W7 lacks by intercepting DLL calls and <techy stuff>. You can get the version that works here:https://github.com/YuZhouRen86/VxKex-NEXT/releasesBUT(and it's a big but) there are many versions of this floating about. The one I know of and use myself is at:https://github.com/i486/VxKexAnd the reason for being careful is spelt out at:https://github.com/i486/VxKex/releases/tag/Version1.1.2.1428tl;dr: The original author stopped authoring and closed his account, and someone else opened an account with the same name and pretended to be him, then released updates. Uh-huh. This thing needs installing with AV disabled, so you get the drift. The i486 account seems to be pukka (at least, I have upgraded to that). The one that lets Kicad work is a fork from the i486 one and I have no idea how trustworthy it is, only that in my VM (that often doesn't run stuff my main machine does) itgot Kicad installed and running. As you can see.

author: PlainName
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 07, 2025, 10:10:26 pm
content: Further research suggests that VxKex-NEXT is pukka. The i486 repo is, AFAICS, a mirror of the original and not progressed. The NEXT author is around and about and seems a straight-up guy wanting to make a difference. I might be wrong, of course, but I've now upgraded to it on my real machine (where it let me play a W10+ Steam game I otherwise wouldn't have been able to [not that the game was any good, though]).

author: j0t
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: March 09, 2025, 01:17:33 pm
content: I know that project, in fact, it was the source of my inspiration and ideas when I was trying to make kicad8 work on windows 7.It is just amazing, taking into account its generic approach. My goal, however, was turn the focus solely on kicad case, so I've developed my own ad-hoc solution. It was real fun! (BTW, it also works with kicad9, though I wasn't tested it too much, it "just works").

author: Anthem
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: May 06, 2025, 07:46:21 am
content: Appreciated you efforts on KiCAD 8 which worked for me. KiCad 9 also works on my Win 7. It just complains that it is not supported.The line in the bat file that does not convert the kicad.exe file correctly is:bspatch bin\unpatched\kicad.exe bin\kicad.exe kicad.bspatchNot sure what kicad.bspatch does but it does not operate of KiCAD 9.03 for meAll the other bspatch operations work on the other exe files fine thoughThe new patched kicad.exe file produced fails to open. So i had to revert to the original, only for that exe file and it works fine, except for the "not supported" warning.I also edited the bat file so that the 8's became 9's and also edited the Kicad_8.0_registry.reg file to Kicad_9.0_registry and edited all the 8s to 9s.