Hi,
Can someone please let me know where I can find the last stable version of KiCad that worked with Win7?
None of the newer operating systems work with my hardware, so I will not be upgrading.
Thanks.
I shouldn’t really be recommending this within earshot of the dev team, but if you go to EEVblog and search the KiCad subforum, you’ll find instructions and patches for installing the latest 7.0 on W7 developed by people in ths same boat as you.
Bear in mind that bug reports for such a KiCad on W7 will not be accepted as that platform is not supported. You have to replicate the bug on a supported platform first.
Please do not report here if you have problems following those instructions, do that in the EEVblog forum.
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One of the links retiredfeline mentions is:
(There are several threads, for different KiCad versions)
When I download the “patch” and look at it I see:
md bin\unpatched
move bin\bitmap2component.exe bin\unpatched\
move bin\eeschema.exe bin\unpatched\
move bin\gerbview.exe bin\unpatched\
move bin\kicad.exe bin\unpatched\
move bin\pcb_calculator.exe bin\unpatched\
move bin\pcbnew.exe bin\unpatched\
move bin\pl_editor.exe bin\unpatched\
move /Y api-ms-win-core-path-l1-1-0.dll bin\
bspatch bin\unpatched\bitmap2component.exe bin\bitmap2component.exe bitmap2component.bspatch
bspatch bin\unpatched\eeschema.exe bin\eeschema.exe eeschema.bspatch
bspatch bin\unpatched\gerbview.exe bin\gerbview.exe gerbview.bspatch
bspatch bin\unpatched\kicad.exe bin\kicad.exe kicad.bspatch
bspatch bin\unpatched\pcb_calculator.exe bin\pcb_calculator.exe pcb_calculator.bspatch
bspatch bin\unpatched\pcbnew.exe bin\pcbnew.exe pcbnew.bspatch
bspatch bin\unpatched\pl_editor.exe bin\pl_editor.exe pl_editor.bspatch
del bspatch.exe
del *.bspatch
del kicad_7.09_patch_all.zip
regedit.exe /S kicad_registry.reg
del kicad_registry.reg
del patch_all.bat
I have absolutely no idea what those patches do. To me it looks like an excellent opportunity to add some viruses or other malware onto your system. I will leave it up to you whether you want to trust whomever uploaded those files.
If you find the patch contains some kind of virus, then send an alert to the admins on the eevblog forum and they will probably take some action to remove the patch or ban the user who uploaded it.
The last stable version of Kicad that worked with Win 7 was Kicad 5.1.12 dated Nov. 5 2021.
Find this, and many other Kicad versions at: https://downloads.kicad.org/kicad/windows/explore/stable
You may also get to Windows, and other Operating System Downloads, as well as Kicad Documentation by going to: https://www.kicad.org/
Another alternative to the one mentioned above by Forum users is:
IF both you AND your computer hardware can cope, install a current Linux OS alongside Win 7 on your computer. You may then install and use the current Kicad in the Linux OS.
I switched to Linux some 8 to 10 years ago, and it has it’s downsides too, but at least it’s easy to maintain and keep your OS current.
If you want to experiment with Linux, I can recommend Linux Mint. It is a very beginners friendly linux distribution, and it has gotten to a point that it “Just Works”. I also recommend to install it on a separate SSD. A 120GB SSD is plenty, and these cost less then EUR15 these days. Electronics is becoming so cheap it’s getting ridiculous. Linux also runs nicely on older hardware. Up to 4 years ago I used a (then) 12 year old dual core PC with a passmark rating of around 1500, and most programs run just fine on it, although it was feeling a little bit sluggish. Then I got another old PC with a PM rating of around 3000 for free, and the difference was noticeable. About 2 years ago I bought a new PC. Main reason was that I wanted to use it for a bigger 107cm 4k monitor. The new PC (EUR600 in parts) was less expensive then the monitor itself (EUR1000). But for starters, adding a cheap SSD for Linux in your existing PC is a good and simple start.
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Adding to this, by dual booting with a current Linux distribution like Ubuntu, @NotRegistered will be able to safely use that mode to safely connect to the Internet. Thanks to the lack of MS support for Windows 7, you cannot reliably detect malware on it.
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But except for all of the possible problems, it is completely trouble free!! 
Seriously I was briefly running KiCad on Linux Mint in an old XP computer (for my lab bench) after installing Mint on a partitioned hard drive. I do not doubt that those among us who are seriously into Linux work with it easily. But at minimum I was using Windows 98% of the time and never became “at home” with Linux. A year ago I replaced my 2014 desk Windows laptop with a new laptop after a few blue screens, and the 2014 laptop is now doing lab duty including KiCad under Win 10.
Split off problem report with 5.1 to new topic