On stock Windows 7 Home Premium, the Minecraft.exe downloaded from:

https://www.minecraft.net/en-us/download/alternative - Windows 7/8 (alternative)

fails with the message:

Couldn't load launcher core from ...\launcher.dll: LoadErrorNotPresent

(image attached). The Minecraft Launcher installed with the .msi installer also gives this error.

The launcher_log.txt is attached below. The error is:

NetQueue: Action failed with result "schannel: failed to receive handshake, SSL/TLS connection failed" (35)

The firewall was off and running it as administrator also didn't help.

In july 2022 it was working.