Second System 2.31: Photoshop 2025 on Windows 8.1!
Added 2025-12-23 20:14:01 +0000 UTCWith this intermediate release of Second System, it is now possible to run Adobe Photoshop 2025 on Windows 8.1. Additional functions and capabilities have been added from later versions of Windows 10, allowing users to also run RcloneView on Windows 7 and up.
Various fixes have been added to improve compatibility with post-2020 updates on Windows 8.0, as well as issues with Python on Windows 7 and below, plus DXGI. (I am also working on a D3D11 enhancement that brings over device interfaces and contexts at the Windows 10 level; it may be suitable for the remaining D3D11 applications that do not work with Second System)
About DirectWrite
Several applications, including Notepad++, Paint.NET and Adobe applications, use DirectWrite's interoperability capabilities. The redistributable, up-to-date version of DirectWrite bundled with Second System does not support those capabilities due to the restraints of cross-platform targetting. Thus, Second System now includes a new option to use the native DirectWrite (written as "Run with Windows 10 Compatibility (No DirectWrite)" in the drop-down menu) while maintaining the Windows 10 compatibility mode to accomodate these applications.
Updated at 2119 (UTC-5) on 2025-12-23 to correct a small issue in the uxtheme wrapper.
Updated at 1504 (UTC -5) on 2026-01-05 to fix issues specific to Windows 7 SP1 (pre-Platform Update), adding support for IntelliJ Idea and some api-set detection functions that other applications may use.
Updated at 0130 (UTC -5) on 2026-01-07 to add the Windows.UI.dll redirect to the Windows 10 non-DirectWrite profile on Windows 8.0 and 8.1.
Updated at 0359 (UTC -5) on 2026-01-08 to revert a change to advapi32.dll that breaks Chromium 145 browser sandboxes on Windows 7 and below; the sandbox becomes too restrictive for renderers to function on such systems.
Updated at 0253 (UTC -5) on 2026-01-22 to add two new DLL definitions for supporting icu.dll, icuuc.dll and icuin.dll, DLLs introduced in Windows 10 1703 that are used by several Qt 6.10+ applications
Comments
There are still a few issues with newer locale APIs that affect .NET Framework even after great efforts to harmonize locale API output with Windows 7, which cause issues with the VS installers. I hope to correct it eventually. The Visual C++ 2022/26 compilers and linkers can be used with VS2008 and VS2010.
win32
2026-01-22 05:03:07 +0000 UTCIs there a chance for any Visual Studio IDE on Vista newer than 2010 (even it would be 2012)? Hard to believe that Windows 7 can natively run Visual Studio 2022 17.8, but Vista is limited to 2010 only
Vistaaa
2026-01-21 21:01:52 +0000 UTCFor Chromium browsers: try the switch "--disable-accelerated-video-decode". Is it possible that DXVA2 works and D3D11VideoDecoder doesn't? That happened with some Intel drivers. I may be able to fudge applications into not using D3D11VideoDecoder using my wrapper or (hopefully soon) D3D11on12 based on D3D12on7, which doesn't support video decoding at this time.
win32
2026-01-18 23:58:20 +0000 UTCTrying to use W7 RDNA 2 drivers on 8.1 causes the driver to crash 9 times out of 10 when doing anything using hardware video decoding. Do you know of any method to fix this?
Tyler
2026-01-18 15:18:43 +0000 UTCv1.18.3 should work.
win32
2026-01-16 01:01:09 +0000 UTCAnyone know if Second System allows recent versions of qTox (QT6) to work? I've been wanting to use it on Win7, but have had to stick to an old version https://github.com/TokTok/qTox/issues/419
Darren de Lima
2026-01-15 22:06:26 +0000 UTCTurns out that Cubase 15 depends on newer WinRT UI interfaces, which I implemented in my Windows.UI.dll replacement, but forgot to redirect from the original Windows.UI.dll in the Windows 10 No DWrite profile. I have updated the Windows 8.0 and 8.1 packages to reflect this change.
win32
2026-01-07 06:37:01 +0000 UTCI had to upgrade from Cubase 14 to Cubase 15, and now it doesn't work. Is this can be fixed? The dump is here: https://mega.nz/file/O8klkLQJ#lrEqLjwSBxYnBYOyWS--WODJEfVI3quZQoxdAjTD9bc OS: Windows 8.1 Pro
Артем Пономарев
2026-01-06 21:25:11 +0000 UTCThere are some shcore/p_uses functions that are in that build that were removed before 9200. I will add them soon.
win32
2026-01-04 07:23:33 +0000 UTCI have found the relevant issues and resolved them. The changes will be released shortly after regression testing is completed.
win32
2026-01-03 07:24:10 +0000 UTCWould you consider making this work with 8 Release Preview as well (build 8400)? It doesn't work as-is, and appears to break almost all apps.
Jacob H.
2026-01-03 04:09:03 +0000 UTCI'm Running Second System 2.31 on Windows 7 Ultimate, I am trying to run Intellij Idea 2025.3.1 however It does not launch, running idea64.exe results in nothing and running idea.bat gives the error "The procedure entry point kernel32.WakeByAddressAll could not be located in the dynamic link library api-ms-win-core-synch-l1-2-0.dll"
Rocky
2026-01-02 19:03:38 +0000 UTCYes, various improvements are coming for user32 (where the issue is likely located because the window loop just dies).
win32
2026-01-01 06:35:30 +0000 UTCWill there be attempts to fix Inno based installers displaying broken blank window on Vista?
Intel Core 2 Extreme
2025-12-31 10:33:07 +0000 UTCWell, there is another Second System iteration that is being created which has a different loading mechanism. It will primarily target pre-Vista systems but should be usable on newer systems as well. And yes, there will be a solution for extending wintrust as well.
win32
2025-12-31 01:46:00 +0000 UTCCould you make a non-wrapper version of this with WinTrust? I am looking for an actual non-wrapped one. Just an idea!
technical_issues1
2025-12-30 19:43:36 +0000 UTCWhich update level are you on (for Vista)?
win32
2025-12-30 15:40:43 +0000 UTCI'm testing Second System 2.31 on Windows Vista SP2 x64 on both baremetal and VM, and the installer always says: ERROR: The system was unable to find the specified registry key or value. SUCCESS: Specified value was saved. ERROR: Error opening the file. There may be a disk or file system error. Second System has been installed. Please reboot or log off/on to continue. Press any key to continue . . . The installer seems to fail to merge the .reg file in the last step. When I tried to hard-code the file location using the one from zip, the installer seems to proceeds successfully. When I try to run steam, it crashes with this message: "The application failed to initialize properly (0xc0000005). Click OK to terminate the application." No compatibility module worked and Steam refuses to run natively. And Explorer always crash on startup, showing the same message. Steam would run on Windows 7 VM on my quick test.
Èntèp Rèmèh
2025-12-30 08:24:27 +0000 UTCPlease try this updated version of ntdlx.dll (rename and replace the existing version - make sure that no multi-process browsers are running when the replacement is done as they will gradually fail due to differences in patching locations): https://mega.nz/file/VsVlEbjY#UXhXWYiUWXuOOg3FPeAsnihqEgSczolzc0z3AR5phUU
win32
2025-12-28 09:04:56 +0000 UTCNow, Cubase 14 starts loading (without DirectWrite, and api-ms-win-core-processthreads-l1-1-3.dll needs to be added), but, unfortunately, still ntdlx.dll crash. I've saved dump here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1VIdH3ahTS-i0yDFiwXrpTZe4JBeA0ZVa/view?usp=sharing
Артем Пономарев
2025-12-25 18:19:53 +0000 UTC
