How to setup signtool with SHA256 on Windows 7?

I have been using SHA1 signing for many years, but from 2016, Windows is forcing developers to use SHA256.

Windows Enforcement of Authenticode Code Signing and Timestamping

By using Windows 7 SDK signtool the functions to sign SHA-256 is "unknown commands", so this signtool is obsolete as a signtool and shouldn't be used any more.

To sign with SHA256 I downloaded the Windows 8.1 SDK to get signtool.exe which got the new functions(/fd and a few others). The BAT file and signtool works on Windows 8 and 10, so I know it works, but crashes on Windows 7 when it tries to timestamp the file.

I use a bat file to sign files, which looks like this(I edited the BAT file so it doesn't show variables, full paths, company name and passwords):

Path\signtool.exe sign /f "Path\Certificate.p12" /fd sha256 /p *password* /du "URL" /tr "timestampServer?td=sha256" /td sha256 /d "Product name" "Filename"

I guess, I don't have the proper SDK to support some of the functions, but I can't find any info on the internet on how to setup this on a Windows 7. I tried to install MS Visual C++ 2015 Redistributable (x64) on my machine without solving the problem.

Seems I'm no good at reading. I'm answering my own question as others could find it hard to find, just like I did.

Windows doesn't support the signtool.exe on Windows 7 any more, so that is why old/obsolete functions like SHA-1 signing is still working, but SHA-256 time stamping is a problem. I found this on MSDN:

Quote from MSDN: Note You can only use SignTool to sign your Windows Store 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.

If you want to read the whole thing then look here:

How to sign an app package using SignTool