pouët.net

Win7 x64, 4790k, GTX 1080 Strix. With this I can run anything including developer builds of alphas on Steam etc. and I have bit by bit added needed things to run demos and ofc some of it has been added automatically with games as part of the install.

I could add more loose bits if specified in nfo or mentioned in comments, but... is there so to speak a list of what is generally needed? I think this would be helpful to many. Or some "democompo machine package" or similar.

Some upload 1080p60 videos which is OK I guess but a tip is making them 1440p >=24Mbps for Youtube's processing not to downgrade the 1080p.

But I'd prefer to run them on my machine and be able to choose 120fps@120Hz, get rid of codec artifacts and shady color processing killing blacks, etc.

Current video drivers
DirectX June 2010 runtime
Windows 10

Without windows 10 you'll miss out on some stuff (not even dx 11.0 has the same features on 7 and 10), but if too stubborn you should at least place the D3DCompiler_47.dll (search for it in your programs dir) somewhere in your path.

Drivers, check
DX, check
DLLs, check
Win 10=no.

Cause of crash is either relying on missing OS component without checking or something completely different unrelated to OS version. In case of the former, how to bridge the gap? I think it would be helpful.

procmon is powerful, albeit cumbersome to look for missing dependencies, and there may also be a chance that an external debug monitor may show something.

However, since you wrote that One of those days doesn't work on windows 7 (it also specifies windows 10 creators update (1703) in the readme), I can tell you that it IS because of your ancient windows version.
Specifically the shaders won't compile because I'm reading from typed UAVs. A very natural thing to do, which you just couldn't until about a year ago, when they silently fixed it together with some other similar issues (like you now have to specify your unorm uavs such as unorm). Just funny that it is neither bound to shadercompiler version nor directx version.

That’s an odd duck. One or two demos needing that is maybe not the end of the world. Maybe compatibility isn’t so bad, and I should try some more before calling it.

But compatibility is relatively low for Windows demos in general, compared to other software. And if you get (or have) an AMD GPU because they have less compatibility issues than NVidia, your PC is pretty much screwed as a demo machine. I don’t think that’s an exaggerated generalization.

There are no Win 10-specific versions of software, and the relatively small differences are, except for this odd duck, differences in packages rather than OS differences, handled by installers that come with it.

So since there are good reasons not to reformat your PC to install Win 10, and there are many Win 7, 8, 8.1, 10 sceners out there, I wonder if there could come some demoscene bundle to install from this.

Thanks for the tips so far.

Well, we got it, you hate Windows (or PC in general) !
Let me tell you something: We all do...we don´t use Windows because we love it! ;) Just most Software works only under Windows...so, well, we are screwed! :/

Your current problem is DirectX-Versions not being supported by your Windows-Version, as simple as that! (Microsofts way of forcing you to use their newest WinVersion! ;) As DirectX is a m$-product aswell!)
See it like this: You need a DirectX12-supporting graphics-card to run game XYZ, so you go and buy one (you got a gtx1080, right?!!).
Why shouldn´t the same apply to your OS? You need a DirectX12-supporting graphics-card to run "One of those Days", so go and buy Win10, the only Windows-Version supporting this! ;)

Signed, a fellow Win7-PowerUser, still not willing to install Win10 (yet).

afaik you dont even have to buy it, the upgrade from win7/8 is still free...

well, should have read "You need a DirectX12-supporting Operating System" in the second installment of that almost same sentence, but i guess the sentence still made sense and you got my point!

Even if it would be still for free (which i doubt is correct, the initial offer was for 1 year after initial release!) you should double-check if you really want that exchange! ;)
In my case i´ve got a 10-user-win7-enterprise-license...and would get one win10-enterprise (or whatever it is called now) license in exchange! -> 9 other users license would turn inactive and would need to BUY win10, as there´s no exchange-license left! ;) In my case only 2 of my family-members share my license on 2 of my other computers they are using, but still: i´d need to buy win10 two times if i´d exchange this license! :/

luckily you get win7-licenses at ~10$ @ebay, atleast last time i checked, so...get one of those, keep your existing win7-license and exchange the newly bought one, except it´s better than your current one of course. :)

I have no clue how microsoft handles enterprise volume licenses or if the upgrade deal did include those in the first place... but I know you can just enter your retail or OEM win7/8 key at installtime (or upgrade) and it wont hassle you and activates as expected.
And yes, offiically they said its going to be a one-year timeslot for that but it still works and I doubt microsoft will change it in the foreseeable future, way too many old windows installs still around they want to get rid of. I think they just used the "1 year" thing to increase the nr of upgrades as the people were under the impression they better do it now...

oh maybe its also worth mentioning that using your win7 key for installing win10 will not disable it for future installations of windows 7, so can still choose or even run both on two different systems.

So, modern intros depend on an 8 year old DX install? o_O I'm guessing this is just for the shader compiler, but still, how long will that stay viable? Is there no alternative?

my guess is that only goes for intros which are still using dx9 as a framework and as thus need the extra compiler dlls.

Not always, it depends:

Older and modern intros still using directx9 (more specifically, the non-standard d3dx extensions) still require the well known extra DirectX installation. The dxwebsetup.exe found by googling for "DirectX June 2010" is the best way. Most games install that anyway.

On the other hand, modern intros using the most current shader compiler (d3dcompiler_47.dll) don't need any additional installation (yay!). Instead they depend on that dll that's included as part of the operating system (starting from windows 8.1).

There are ways to make those intros compatible for Windows 7 by placing that dll (you can find it in certain visual studio or internet explorer program directories) in your windows system directory.

If the intros actually use state of the art GPU features, then you definitely need the newest DirectX Implementation and that's definitely not available in Windows 7.

I'm sorry to put it this way... but Windows 7 is over a decade old. It's perfectly valid to assume that modern intros should run on a naked current windows version. And that's 8.1-10.

Except anything that requires DirectX 12. And some demos, apparently :D

Official support for Windows 7 ended years ago already and modern PCs are not fixed platforms for a good reason. If you want to run the latest stuff, it's time to upgrade.

Just out of curiosity, what's your main reason for not using Windows 10? Are you afraid Microsoft uses your private data? Do you think it's an unsafe OS (yet you use an unsuported OS)? Expensive? You use some outdated software that only runs on that specific version of Windows?

Capture once, watch everywhere.

Capture once, watch shitty youtube blocky bitrate everywhere :(

But you get a seek bar!

Windows 7 is neither unsupported, nor over a decade old, as claimed above. It's still the Windows with the best usability and least annoyance factors for me.

Also it doesnt boot behind your back and doesnt need this http://win10-rebootblocker.windows10compatible.com/ :P

what saga said

"Mainstream support ended on January 13, 2015.
Extended support ends on January 14, 2020."
It only has support for critical security vulnerabilities. Whatever that is.

I understand the auto-reboot issue might be a problem on some specific cases, like if you have a days long render running, or if you have some services running that can't be interrupted for 5 minutes. Other than that?

It would actually be nice for historical preservation reasons to know what dependencies (e.g.version of Direct X etc) some important demos have. I know of someone clueful who only watches captures of intros more than a few years old because of this problem, which is depressing. There's got to be some way to get a dependency snapshot, preferably for all the intros released at a specific party, if people just write down the relevant compo machine info. Hmm I wonder if las will see this . . .