We have a Windows 7 pro SP1 Build 7601 machine that cannot run signtool using the windows sdk version 10.0.26100. When I run signtool from the command line there is no output. I suspect it might be that it is not compatible with the system. The only temporary fix is to copy the “wintrust.dll” file from “C:WindowsSysWOW64” to the bin folder where signtool is located. After some time signtool will crash again and I have to copy the file again. I think this also has to do with a dll initialization error because when I try to sign I also get a -1073741502 exit code. Does anyone know how I can fix this issue?
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Since Windows 7 does no longer get support by Microsoft, the tool won’t work correctly with this OS.
If you need to use a Windows 7 device for any reason, you can sign your package on another device running Windows 10/11 and copy the file to your Windows 7 device.
You can only use SignTool to sign your Windows app packages on Windows 8 and later or Windows Server 2012 and later. You can’t use SignTool to sign app packages on down-level operating systems such as Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2.
Source: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/appxpkg/how-to-sign-a-package-using-signtool
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