Yeah, the devs forced me to upgrade to Windows 10 back in October last year with the new launcher. I could not make the game work on Windows 7 Pro 64-bit. I spent the whole weekend updating the system and all the apps on it and I was really upset I was forced to do that by the devs. It was not just a system update which is relatively quick. I had to move from MBR based boot to UEFI, which required updating the partition table, then move to UEFI boot and upgrade only when UEFI was up and running. I spent like a week trying to make the game work on Windows 7, but it failed. I would much prefer devs give us a forward warning that say in 3 months with update x or y Windows 7 will not be supported anymore and ask the players to prepare, and upgrade the software and hardware if needed. Instead, they dropped the launcher which did not fully work on Windows 7 and said nothing about it.

UPDATE: Ok, I found out the problem. It was the Win XP SP3 compatibility mode enabled that was the problem. I unchecked it and the game finally launched. Guess WinXP SP3 compatibility is 32bit mode only and using 64bit launcher would obviously not work. So, people, check your settings.

I am honestly upset now. I put some efforts to upgrade my gaming PC to Windows 10 back in October 2022 since the game stopped working on Windows 7. A mere 5 months later, I am on the newest release of Windows 10 Pro x64 and the game does not work again. I do not want to spend 2 hours again reinstalling the game to learn it does not work either after the reinstall. And what now?

I also have problems getting into the game and I am on Windows 10 Pro 64-bit with DX12. I can start the launcher and log in with my password, then I can press the PLAY button. The game starts, gives me the login wallpaper and then I get the server selection window which is empty. No servers available and the game gives me the error that the list of servers cannot be retrieved. I do not have any AV software apart from Windows Defender. Windows has all the current updates and the game worked just fine yesterday, So, I have no idea why the server list is empty. Any ideas? EDIT: SWTOR was already allowed to pass through the firewall of the Windows Defender, but I disabled the firewall entirely and I still get the empty server list even without any firewall enabled.

Ok, so since I had an official Windows 7 Pro license I reviewed if free upgrade to Windows 10 still works and based on the an article I read from Jan 2022 it still should work. So, I downloaded the Microsoft upgrade tool and tried to upgrade. Naturally, since I ran Win7 SP1 without even 1 update I could not run the utility. Fortunately, I could download the ISO file and make a booting USB stick. I upgraded the system to the newest updated version of Windows 10 without any issues in 1 hour and the license was accepted and the system was activated. So, I moved smoothly and for free to Windows 10 and I went to the SWTOR launcher I physically copied from my laptop and it managed to check the updates correctly, I logged in and the game works now without any issues. So, folks running Windows 7. It seems the best way to make this game run is to do the free upgrade to Windows 10. If you have officially activated WIndows 7, you can upgrade to the newest Windows 10 for free. Oh, well, seems like it's time to say goodbye to Windows 7 gaming.... Anyhow, I can finally play again.

So it seems Windows 7 launcher error will not be handled? Anyone has seen any official statement on this front from the devs? Did they officially drop the Windows 7 support?

Well, I did remove BR and all .version files and modified the launcher.settings not to use BR, but the launcher still does not update and gave me Unable to retrieve patch data (206) error. So, with Bitraider or without it still does not work on Win7 due to the certs in all probability.

Yeah, sorry WINE people. It is not an emulator indeed. I use it since back in 2000 and find it very useful. But as you said with the consequtive updates the game was running slower and slower on WINE so I dropped it. When I started to play on Linux in 2019 I saw no speed difference, but now it is very visible and in quick combat like PVP it is apparent how slow it runs under WINE.

Yes, I checked and I have Win7 Professional SP1. I installed the 2 older certs the Linux forums mention are needed to run the game, but to no avail. The launcher refuses to update. As for the REF host_IEVersionFailure error, it was popping up when I used the game installer. I updated the IE to version 11 and the error went away. But despite of this the installer failed to download the game probably due to the same certificate issue.

Exactly. OS version is irrelevant since similar errors are reported by users across the different OS platforms. The Steam error I got on Win7 was reported by Win10 users. So, it is basically the same bug effecting different Windows versions and it should be resolved regardless if they move away from supporting older Windows releases or not. I only stick to Win7 on my gaming PC cause it runs the quickest (in my subjective opinion). Last 3 years I played on Linux with wine emulator, but it is a bit slower than on Windows. So I stopped playing on Linux due to slower graphics rendering. But if they do not resolve the bug within this month, I will install Steam on Linux along with Swtor and drop Windows entirely. For now I can only play on my laptop in Windows 10, but the screen is smaller and the game runs slower, so it is not as enjoyable as playing a destkop with good specs.

Guys, upon reflection, the current issue with the launcher both on Windows 7 and 10 stems most likely from the old certificates installed in the system. Linux users seem to be dealing with this since last year. This is my conclusion, since Steam reports Certificate authentication error on Windows 7 when launching the game, while if I copy the entire game via external HDD from a working copy I pass the initial login, but then the launcher fails the file verification stage reporting error code 987: RepositoryFileCheck_Error_Metafile. This verification is most cases is also based on a set of certificates and it fails, most likely due to expired, missing or removed certificates. Most likely the dev team either moved to new certs, which may be missing in the older operating systems, or they use older ones, while the OS removed the invalid ones. Either/or or both. In any case, this should be a simple fix by simply writing which certificates should be installed in the system in order to 1st install it, 2nd launch or update the game. I really do not know why nobody from the dev team is installing a Virtual Machine Windows 7 or older Windows 10 and debug the issue and fix it. Linux users report that adding required certificates to Linux solves the issue. It seems they do not have enough devs to deal with this problem.

Best to simply copy the entire game to an external HDD and copy it onto your father's laptop. I did it and it starts the launcher, but naturally on Windows 7 you get file verification error code 986. But if you copy from Windows 10 to Windows 10, it should work in theory. Now, if you do not want to wait 30 mins to copy 50Gb of data, copy everything except for assets and movies folders. These folders account for most of the size. This way, you copy the shell of the game with the launcher and when you start the launcher it should verify the assets and upon not finding them, download them. I tried it and it works. I just copied the launcher shell with bitraider and when I started the launcher it downloaded the entire game immediately. Good luck!

No, it stands for IE. IE executable is often used by programs to access the Internet. Lots of viruses and tojans use it, so it is better to remove it in Windows 7 and ealier versions. I removed it long ago and never had any issues with my Win7 PC. You can upgrade IE7 to IE11 like I did and the installer starts, BUT it does not manage to download the game on Windows 7. Who knows why.

Really? Preach to the guy who own a computer since 1984. I know what system requirements are. But why write Windows 7 on Steam when it clearly does not work. The few users who are still on Win7 can neither install nor run this game anymore. They should at least change the sysreq to Windows 8 or something.

Yes, indeed. Only my launcher problems started in early September. Now I know they were randomly se;lecting people to test the new launcher. Aparently, I was one of them and one day the laucher started to give me 206 error, but there was no mismatch between my game client and the server. My launcher never updated and when they bumped up the game version on the server, I got into troubles and all I can do now is log in and do some dailies.