Hello there,
I use an old w7 machine for retroarch & the LPRS2 core does not work. I tried looking up some information to see if there was anything I could possibly do to get it working. The only thing I came up on explaining the problem is this.
Is there anything I could try?
hmm, yeah, probably not anything you can fix on your end. It’s looking for dependencies that apparently don’t exist on Win7. If you could get those libs from a later version of Windows, you might be able to drop them into your RetroArch directory.
Would you know by any chance if anyone has done that? Even if I had those dlls would windows know what to do with them if retroarch calls it or would retroarch handle that? Is it possible if a dev worked on it to have the core detect the os & then if windows 7 drop requiring those?
What do those dlls even do?
I don’t know what they do. One appears to be related to directx, at least. I don’t know if anyone’s tried just plopping them into the folder. Programs should look in thelocal folder for libs first, but I don’t know how well that works with system-level libs (if that’s what these are).
If I get a hand on those 2 dlls i’ll report back here what happens. I currently use PCSX2 1.6.0 to play PS2 games on that machine any version after that does not work. Some games stutter or move in super slow motion while theres others that work perfectly fine.
I hope we can figure something I would love to be able to play True Crime: Streets of NY, The Sims Bustin Out, & a few others which don’t run well. TC:SONY crashes the pcsx2 & sims bustin out goes black after the loading screen loads.
I have a Windows 8.1 machine and the same thing occurs here.As was mentioned before it’s no doubt looking for some files or some dependencies because it simply won’t load on Win 8.1.
Same thing happens with the newer/latest Dolphin core as well since it got updated. Just out of curiosity, can you check if the newest Dolphin core works/loads for you?
I took a look for you & yes it’s basically the same thing missing that .dll which looks like windows 11 has & the kernel is failing as well because of the procedure import steps which is most likely only in win 10 & 11. If you want to check any other emulators or future versions I will show you how.
Download Dependencies
Run dependenciesgui.exe Open the exe of the emulator in dependencies.
After it opens on the left side panel look for any icons that may look like a cogwheel or question mark in red.
You can hover your mouse over these to get the error problem or click them. For example with Dolphin where the kernel fails it says “C:\Windows\system32\kernel32.dll module has missing imports” if you hover over api-ms-win-devices-config-11-1-1.dll. The error states “api-ms-win-devices-config-11-1-1.dll could not be found on disk” this dll is on windows 11.
In this photo if you click on kernel32.dll in the top right panel you can see the steps that failed they will have a purple reddish tab next to it. If you were to show this to someone who was looking into it you would have to scroll through all of that & show them every point which has a purple reddish tab.
Very interesting, thanks. I might take a look myself using this program.
I did come across this as a work around for the Dolphin emulator. If you want to give it a try follow the instructions.
I tried the one version that does not require VxKex & just the .dll & QT replacements. That worked for me up until I tried to resize the game’s window then I was completely frozen. That may be a graphic issue since I use an intergrated family chip & have no gpu. But then again maybe it’s something with the QT or that I chose directx11 in graphic settings.
VxKex is a program which handles .dll calls that are in win 8/8.1/10/11 it was made for people who want to run apps that required the later windows os to work on their version of windows. I use this for a few programs that we’re made to run on windows 10 to run on my win7 machine. I appreciate those devs for making it it keeps us going when microsoft says you can’t you must upgrade. It won’t work for every program out there but you can use it to run some apps which may not run on your 8.1 because they require 10 or 11.
In light of reading that thread since they put the w11 .dll in the folder maybe it will work the same if we can get the w11 & w10 .dll in retroarch maybe it might have to go into the LPRS2 core folder or the system one. If it don’t work then maybe dependency check it if the kernel is failing because of import procedures then you could VxKex it. Or as in that thread was suggesting that the dev may need to modify the core or a .dll that is apart of it to create dummy procedure imports for the kernel to recognize & just move it along.
I hope we all can figure this out I want LPRS2 to work on my w7 machine. I just think it’s important to understand what these .dlls actually do because we’ve had emulators work with ps2 long before windows 8/8.1/10/11 existed. Most people just dropped w7 because microsoft said so & just added those without understanding them. If they are related to directx 10 & 11 okay that’s something to understand & learn about.
But my curiosity is can’t the core just be modified not to check for these & run without them or create a ignore if missing step in the core? Because I use PCSX2 1.4.0 & 1.6.0 I notice the improvements from 4.0 to 6.0 i’m pretty sure later versions have lots of improvements but dont nescessarily need those .dlls to run. But because theres a dependency check for it it won’t.
If it’s really something simple to change that would make them compatible, sure, that’d be great. Though I doubt it’s as simple as that. I wouldn’t want or expect the devs to undertake (another) massive rewrite of those cores just for a really tiny fractions of Windows users at this point. I’m just glad we got updated cores at all tbh.
For anyone not too familiar with the issue, the old lrps2 and Dolphins cores were based on pcsx2 and Dolphin standalones that did work on Win7/8. But at some point during their development, the (standalone) authors dropped support for pre win10. So when the cores were finally updated after all this time, they inherited I guess the dropped support for older Windows versions as well.
Btw, the Dependencies program you linked to is great. It works for exes and dlls.
Here is what it shows for me when I give it the old Dolphin core dll that worked on win8 (and I assume win 7 as well though I haven’t tested that)
So, no errors reported.
But here is what it shows with the latest up to date version:
So, as you mentioned, the problem is related to “kernel32.dll”. This file is present on my machine (and it loads it fine with the old core as you can see). So basically, I’m guessing it’s expecting a different version of the dll (and I doubt it’s as simple as replacing that with a newer version…probably very ill-advised too and could possibly make one’s OS inoperable so I’m not even gonna attempt it).
Maybe the drop for pre win10 support is related to DirectX12 I’m guessing (which is only available post Windows10 afaik).
