Boot system software

At a glance

What this step does

Installing firmware only puts the system software on your disk. Booting it is what actually starts the PlayStation 5 interface, running inside a window on Windows.

Choose File, then Boot system software. The first boot is the slowest because the emulator is doing first-run work that will not repeat.

What you should see

The familiar system interface appears and responds to a connected pad or to keyboard and mouse. The status bar along the bottom of the launcher shows your renderer and any controller Vesper has found.

From there you can move on to adding the games you own. Until some are added there is nothing of yours for the interface to list.

If the boot stalls

• A black window that never resolves: update your graphics driver, because Vulkan 1.3 is provided by the driver rather than by Windows.
• An immediate error about firmware: the package did not finish installing, so run Install Firmware again.
• The app closes with no message: often an unsupported CPU, since AVX2 is required.
• Everything works but input does nothing: the controller has not been picked up, which the DualSense guide covers.