Comments on: Time Travel: Running Python 3.7 on XP

By: Erik Pistelli

Erik Pistelli — Thu, 29 Apr 2021 15:06:53 +0000

In reply to Adamski. Thank you!

By: Adamski

Adamski — Wed, 25 Nov 2020 12:59:57 +0000

Great writeup. Clear, concise and to the point.
It’s very educational and altough I’m not a programmer, it’s helpful information on how things work and examples on workarounds for Windows XP.

By: Erik Pistelli

Erik Pistelli — Sat, 21 Nov 2020 15:56:27 +0000

In reply to Maurice.

Thank you, Maurice.

While it is indeed compiled with VS2013, the target does not need the runtime installed. You can statically link against the runtime. That’s exactly what the following cmake line does:

string(REPLACE “/MD” “/MT” ${COMPFLAG} “${${COMPFLAG}}”)

So the runtime is not an issue. As for MinGW, pragma statements are often supported by other compilers. Unfortunately, I don’t know if MinGW supports the needed ones as I don’t use MinGW.

By: Maurice

Maurice — Sat, 21 Nov 2020 14:52:51 +0000

This is an inspiring article for a newbie like me. I would like to compile xernel32.dll myself, but I assume that if it is compiled with Visual Studio 2013 the target machine has to have the 2013 runtimes installed. Am I right in assuming that the #pragma comment feature belongs to MSVC, and that I could not compile xernel32.dll with the MinGW C compiler to avoid the need for VC++ runtimes?

Also an example of the the commands you could use for compiling xernel32.dll using the MinGW C++ compiler would be helpful because I already have MinGW installed, and don’t want to download and install Visual Studio 2013 for a single task.

By: Erik Pistelli

Erik Pistelli — Thu, 12 Nov 2020 17:37:12 +0000

In reply to dummies. Well, the answer is in the article. It's not so easy. The best way would be if the developers of Python would allow for it. :)

By: dummies

dummies — Tue, 10 Nov 2020 12:11:30 +0000

how can i run python3.7 on xp

By: Erik Pistelli

Erik Pistelli — Sat, 22 Feb 2020 16:06:59 +0000

In reply to Adam.

Hello Adam,
Yes, in fact I deploy it in my Cerbero Suite in order to support Windows XP. 🙂

By: Adam

Adam — Thu, 20 Feb 2020 22:14:51 +0000

Hello Erik,

So, finally… Have you been using your hacked python 3.7 on Windows XP ?

By: dpistelli

dpistelli — Mon, 14 Jan 2019 10:34:19 +0000

In reply to ovi.

Hello ovi,

thank you, glad you liked it!

well the files on github have already few of the missing APIs added. So I recommend you get the files from GitHub.

1) It probably just extracts the Python files, you need to get to the point where it does it. Check perhaps with a tool like Process Monitor where it extracts the files.

2) You need to compile a xernel32 dll with the missing API, yes. No need to copy the entire kernel32, just implement the one missing API inside xernel32, the other APIs will be just forwarded.

Hope this helps!

Cheers

By: ovi

ovi — Sun, 13 Jan 2019 17:49:04 +0000

Hello dpistelli,

first of all I want to thank you for this detailed and thorough analysis.
I am fairly new to this topic, which is why I’ll need to read it a few more times to get everything, but I have a very simple question, because I am right now facing the problem
of running an executable on XP because of a missing API.

As far as I understood, after running the above shown script, I get all of the cpp files that are also in your Github repository…
If I now want to rename the important dll inside my application, I have two questions:
1) it is just an .exe (originally written in python) so how do I get to the point shown in your penultimate screenshot where I change the dll

2) do I have to create a dll (I’ll just also call it “xernel.dll”) file and just copy the content of the kernel32.cpp into it in order for it to function?

Thanks in advance and I hope to hear from you soon!