The Intel SDE (Software Development Emulator) is a free tool that is able to run software that requires instructions from some newer CPUs on older CPUs. For example, if an application requires AVX2 support you can use the SDE to run it on a Sandy Bridge CPU that supports AVX but not AVX2. Intel still releases new SDE versions, but the oldest version available for download (8.69.1) requires Vista or later. Does anyone know where to find an older version that still includes XP/2003 support? The most recent one would probably be a 5.x or 6.x SDE version, but I don't know exactly which one. Old download pages are on the Wayback Machine. I don't have enough posts to link to them, but they include file names such as sde-external-6.12.0-2013-11-16-win.tar.bz2 which may be useful. Thanks!
The Wayback Machine has the pages archived, but not the software downloads since there weren't any real links (just links to "protected-download" pages). I still haven't found any builds that targeted XP/2003, however I found that sde-external-7.49.0-2016-07-07-win.tar.bz2 is on Zippyshare if you look for it. That site is far from reputable, but the archive and its contents scan as clean. That version worked for some quick tests in XP and 2003 after patching the PE headers from 6.0 to 5.1 since there aren't actually any dependencies for NT 6.0 or later. CPU-Z should have worked with it to show the added CPU capabilities, but it crashes during init. However, HWiNFO worked fine and was showing AVX, AVX2 and so on as supported on an Intel CPU from 2008. The much more recent versions of SDE from 2021 and 2022 that are currently available to download from Intel do have dependencies that would require the use of Vista or a kernel extender. I consider both of those options to be unacceptable. I'm still interested in a late or final build that targeted and officially supported XP/2003 to at least see if CPU-Z works correctly with that. Such a build could also be useful if other compatibility problems with SDE 7.49.0 are encountered later.
Thank you for sharing those. I patched 7.2.0 to PE 5.1 for testing and it mostly works fine like 7.49.0, though CPU-Z still doesn't work. Strange. Such a shame about all of those much older versions that aren't available. Intel does have a general tendency to erase their own online history though, so it isn't a big surprise.
Very possibly with the kernel extended to add support for the InitializeCriticalSectionEx dependency in dia_client.dll. Otherwise not so much since pin.exe depends on dia_client.dll.