I was happily running Arduino IDE 2 up to version 2.1.1 on my Window 8.1 OS, but the update to 2.2.0 caused the operating system to unexpectly state my shortcuts to the IDE 2 directory were invalid.
After that the program appeared to be installed, but just wouldn't start. Reinstalling V2.1.1 solved the issue.
I appreciate that Window 8.1 isn't supported, so I've no expectations of any fix, but just thought I'd flag it up anyway.
Retried updating to version 2.2.0 and the problem remains.
Looking at the Task Manger, a couple of "Arduino IDE" background processes start-up, but are instantly terminated and the application doesn't start.
Can you open a terminal and start the Arduino IDE from the command line ?
How much of a computer nerd are you ? You can install linux next to Windows and have a full up-to-date operating system.
Hi @Koepel
Thank you for your suggestion. I've attempted to run the executable from Windows Explorer, but haven't tried the command line yet.
I guess I'll just stick with V2.1.1 for now.
I'm not much of a computer nerd, although I do intend to run a Linux OS on my next machine.
Hi @MartinL.
Thanks for sharing your experiences. As you say, we don't do any testing with older Windows versions so it would be interesting to see reports from other users of older Windows versions to get an idea of whether the breakage was universal to that OS version, or whether it is only about something specific to your machine. A lot of significant development work happened between 2.1.1 and 2.2.0 so it is entirely possible that the previous incidental support for Windows 8.1 or older was lost universally through one of those changes.
I noticed a couple of reports about Windows 7:
Hi @ptillisch
To be honest, I'm just glad that the IDE 2.x worked with Windows 8.1 for as long as it did, as it has a lot of really nice features. I'll just stay with version 2.1.1 for now update it as soon as I get round to upgrading my PC with a new machine.
By the way, I'd like to take this opportunity thank you and Arduino team for your work on IDE 2.x, as well as providing detailed answers on the forum, much appreciated.
Thanks for your positivity. I'm very glad if you have found Arduino IDE 2.x and my efforts here on the forum to be of value.
Regards,
Per
A post was split to a new topic: IDE won't start after update to 2.2.0
Where can I download the previous V2.1.1 exe/msi???
Hi @rsardu
It's possible to download the previous version 2.1.1 from Github. Just click on arduino-ide_2.1.1_Windows64-bit.exe:
Thanks. What a pity that Win7 no longer works.
THANKS!
that worked for me. I do not care about the update number but it works!
I have the same error on Windows 7 with Arduino IDE 2.2.1.
Hi @angile. Although Windows 10 has been specified as the minimum officially supported version from the start of the Arduino IDE 2.x version series, earlier versions did have incidental compatibility with Windows 7 through 8.1. That compatibility was lost starting from Arduino IDE 2.2.0, so Arduino IDE 2.1.1 is the last version compatible with those obsolete Windows versions.
I'll provide instructions you can follow to install and configure Arduino IDE 2.1.1:
Click the following link to open the page for the 2.1.1 release in the Arduino IDE GitHub repository:
Release 2.1.1 · arduino/arduino-ide · GitHub
From the list of download links under the "Assets" section of the page, click the link with the name:
ⓘ If you aren't sure which one you need, use arduino-ide_2.1.1_Windows_64bit.exe
Wait for the download to finish.
Install Arduino IDE from the downloaded file as you would normally do.
You will now find that Arduino IDE periodically shows an "Update Available" dialog to offer you an update to the newer version of Arduino IDE. You must not accept these updates since the newer versions are not compatible with your vintage version of Windows.
There are two methods for dealing with these update offers. I'll provide instructions for both of them. You can pick whichever one of the two is most convenient for you.
The "Update Available" dialog contains a "SKIP VERSION" button. If you click that button, Arduino IDE will no longer show the dialog for the specific newer version being offered at the time you click the button.
The dialog will appear once again each time Arduino releases a new version of Arduino IDE, so you will need to click the button again after each release. That is slightly inconvenient, but the release cycle is fairly long so I don't think it will be very burdensome.
It is possible to completely disable the offers of updates in the Arduino IDE advanced settings. The downside is this setting also disables offers of updates for your installed boards platforms and libraries.
arduino.checkForUpdates in the "Search Settings" field of the "Preferences" tab.If you chose this "Disable All Update Offers" method, make sure to periodically check to see if newer versions of your installed boards platforms and libraries are available. You can do this by opening Boards Manager and then setting the "Type" menu to "Updatable", then repeating the process with Library Manager.
There is no possibility of a problem using newer versions of libraries on a computer with an older version of Windows, so don't worry about a Windows incompatibility when updating your libraries.
It is theoretically possible that some future version of a boards platform could have a minimum Windows version requirement, but I'm not aware of any such thing at this time. Even if you did encounter that a boards platform stopped working after an update, you can always easily downgrade the platform back to the last working version via the Arduino IDE Boards Manager.
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