Windows XP help - Dam TBird

Bill wrote:

On Win XP Pro

TBrd said I had an update so I did it. Then it said the update was not
compatibl. No TBird will not start as it says it is not 32 bit
application. I used their updater. I hope they catch hell for this
stupidity. So, here do I download the latest TBird for my Win XP Pro
? I sure hope it did not destroy my settings and archives !!!!!

You sure you got an update notice from Thunderbird itself? Their
updater should check on what OS that program is running to know that
there are no updates to the product on that old OS. Windows XP support
got dropped awhile ago.

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb...t-xp-and-vista

Were you already on version 52 when you got the Tbird update notice? If
so, there should've been no such notice. You sure you aren't using some
software updater program? Avast has one (if you install it - I don't
because I consider it bloatware). There are many of these utilities
that check the versions of installed software and then check against a
database to see if there are newer versions, and then prompt you to
update despite the new[er] versions may not involve any security update
or have an fixes that apply to your deployment of the program.

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb...-update-failed

On Windows XP, I would expect their update checker to not even perform a
check or see the server was offering nothing later than what is already
installed. The checker would see v52 was the last available version for
your platform (Windows XP) and then abort the check. An manual check
should note that you already have the latest version for your platform.
If those safety nets were missing, I would expect the installation of a
newer version to fail on Windows XP since they do a platform check.

If you alread have Tbird 52 installed on your Windows XP computer and
then see a prompt to get a newer version, I'd wonder if that prompt was
actually from Tbird itself. Could be a software updater tool included
as part of something else you installed. Could be malware trying to get
you to download an malicious file. If you get the bogus update notice
again, use SysInternals' Process Explorer (PE) and drag its sniperscope
toolbar icon over the suspect window. PE will tell you who is the
owning process of that window, so you could see if it was issued from
Tbird or something else.

Also, "Windows XP" does not state the bitwidth of that OS. There is the
32-bit Windows XP and then there's the 64-bit fake Windows XP. The
latter is Windows 2003 server (64-bit) that has been crippled down to
the feature set of a workstation edition of Windows and a "Windows XP"
desktop applied. There really was no 64-bit version of Windows XP. It
was a crippled server edition with a WinXP UI.

You didn't mention what was your current version of Tbird when the
update notice appeared. As I recall, there was a problem moving past or
to version 38. You have to not use the auto-updater, get the full
installer, do that installer, and then you could proceed to auto-update
to later versions. I'm not sure version 38 was where the hiccup
occurred, only that the auto-updater couldn't get to and then past that
version and you had to manually run the installer.