Panic on Windows 7 machine: "bcryptprimitives.dll not found"

[Uefi1]

Describe the problem

Hello, since yesterday the program has stopped detecting the ESP32 board, the status is always Not Connected, although EspTool sees the board separately, flashes it, and formats it successfully.

As you can see from the screenshots, the port field is completely inactive.

To reproduce

Expected behavior

Arduino IDE version

2.1.1

Operating system

Windows

Operating system version

7 x64

Additional context

No response

Issue checklist

• I searched for previous reports in the issue tracker
• I verified the problem still occurs when using the latest nightly build
• My report contains all necessary details

[per1234]

Thanks for your report @Uefi1. The list of serial ports shown in Arduino IDE is provided by a helper tool named "serial-discovery". Arduino IDE automatically updates the installed serial-discovery tool when a new version is available. We recently released version 1.4.2 and 1.4.3 of serial-discovery.

I confirmed that compatibility with Windows 7 was lost in version 1.4.2 of serial-discovery. This version panics when ran on a Windows 7 machine:

fatal error: bcryptprimitives.dll not found
runtime: panic before malloc heap initialized

runtime stack:
runtime.throw({0x13fb1b5ec?, 0x13fc0ce20?})
        /usr/local/go/src/runtime/panic.go:1094 +0x4d fp=0x38f9c0 sp=0x38f990 pc=0x13fa402cd
runtime.loadOptionalSyscalls()
        /usr/local/go/src/runtime/os_windows.go:268 +0x27f fp=0x38fa00 sp=0x38f9c0 pc=0x13fa08b5f
runtime.osinit()
        /usr/local/go/src/runtime/os_windows.go:477 +0x3d fp=0x38fa60 sp=0x38fa00 pc=0x13fa091dd
runtime.rt0_go()
        /usr/local/go/src/runtime/asm_amd64.s:348 +0x137 fp=0x38fa68 sp=0x38fa60 pc=0x13fa452f7

So this is why Arduino IDE no longer discovers serial ports.

The specific regression point is 2eabc9e (#93).

An equivalent loss of Windows 7 compatibility occured in version 1.0.10 of the mdns-discovery tool that discovers "network" protocol ports, at arduino/mdns-discovery@9991129 (arduino/mdns-discovery#53).

The loss of Windows 7 compatibility is the expected result of us upgrading the version of the Go programming language we use for this project. We do not provide support for the obsolete Windows 7, so we will not take action to restore compatibility.

I'll provide instructions you can follow to configure your computer to use the last Windows 7 compatible versions of serial-discovery and mdns-discovery below:

Workaround

A. Preparation

1. Select File > Quit from the Arduino IDE menus if it is running.
   All Arduino IDE windows will close.

B. Create persistent installation of serial-discovery

1. Click the following link to open the release page of the last compatible version of serial-discovery:
   https://github.com/arduino/serial-discovery/releases/tag/v1.4.1
2. Click the "serial-discovery_v1.4.1_Windows_64bit.zip" download link you will see under the "Assets" section of the release page.
   A file download will start in your web browser.
3. Extract the downloaded file.
4. Create a folder named 99.99.99 in the folder at the following path on your hard drive:

   C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Arduino15\packages\builtin\tools\serial-discovery
   

   (where <username> is your Windows username)
   • ❗ If looking for it with your file manager or command line, note that the AppData folder is hidden by default. On Windows "File Explorer", you can make it visible by opening the "View" menu, then checking the box next to "☐ Hidden items".
5. Copy the serial-discovery.exe file from the folder you extracted at step 3 of these instructions into the 99.99.99 folder you created.

C. Create persistent installation of mdns-discovery

1. Click the following link to open the release page of the last compatible version of mdns-discovery:
   https://github.com/arduino/mdns-discovery/releases/tag/v1.0.9
2. Click the "mdns-discovery_v1.0.9_Windows_64bit.zip" download link you will see under the "Assets" section of the release page.
   A file download will start in your web browser.
3. Extract the downloaded file.
4. Create a folder named 99.99.99 in the folder at the following path on your hard drive:

   C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Arduino15\packages\builtin\tools\mdns-discovery
   

   (where <username> is your Windows username)
   • ❗ If looking for it with your file manager or command line, note that the AppData folder is hidden by default. On Windows "File Explorer", you can make it visible by opening the "View" menu, then checking the box next to "☐ Hidden items".
5. Copy the mdns-discovery.exe file from the folder you extracted at step 3 of these instructions into the 99.99.99 folder you created.

D. Verification

Verify that you have created the following folder structure:

C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\
├── Arduino15\
│   ├── packages\
│   │   ├── builtin\
│   │   │   └── tools\
│   │   │       ├── mdns-discovery\
│   │   │       │   ├── 99.99.99\
│   │   │       │   │   └── mdns-discovery.exe
│   │   │       │   ...
│   │   │       └── serial-discovery\
│   │   │           ├── 99.99.99\
│   │   │           │   └── serial-discovery.exe
│   │   │           ...
│   │   ...
│   ...
...

(where <username> is your Windows username)

Now start Arduino IDE. You should see the expected list of serial ports.

---

If you have any questions or problems while following those instructions, please request assistance on Arduino Forum:

https://forum.arduino.cc/c/development-tools/ide-2-x/93

we'll be happy to provide further help over there. I monitor the forum closely, so I'll be sure to see any forum posts you make on the subject.

[Uefi1]

Thank you so much, everything worked =)
I also noticed that you are using Python. Perhaps that is why you are abandoning support for Windows 7. You can try releasing releases with these versions of Python that work on almost all Windows 7, 8, 10, 11 https://github.com/adang1345/PythonVista