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#1
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Latest guidance re how to get updates
Got an Averatec 3150P laptop still running XP Pro after 15 years, maybe
because I only drag it out nowadays on or maybe shortly after Patch Tuesday to see if it still boots up and can snag whatever updates are available. I was doing this via the registry hack that spoofed XP Imbedded and POSReady 2009 (the one that promised updates until next year). This worked fine until some event-don't recall exactly what now-prompted Microsoft to temporarily resume updating XP a little while back. Last updates I successfully got were at the end of March (little late updating that month and have slacked off since). Anyway, we're back to the eternal "searching for updates" issue and Microsoft Security Essentials, which HAD started working again, now won't update even after searching overnight. Any ideas as to where I should go from here? Really would like to get those last few months of updates that hack promised. |
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#2
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Latest guidance re how to get updates
On 14/06/2018 22:27, none wrote:
Got an Averatec 3150P laptop still running XP Pro after 15 years, maybe because I only drag it out nowadays on or maybe shortly after Patch Tuesday to see if it still boots up and can snag whatever updates are available. I was doing this via the registry hack that spoofed XP Imbedded and POSReady 2009 (the one that promised updates until next year). This worked fine until some event-don't recall exactly what now-prompted Microsoft to temporarily resume updating XP a little while back. Last updates I successfully got were at the end of March (little late updating that month and have slacked off since). Anyway, we're back to the eternal "searching for updates" issue and Microsoft Security Essentials, which HAD started working again, now won't update even after searching overnight. Any ideas as to where I should go from here? Really would like to get those last few months of updates that hack promised. Why bother with updates on that clunker. It is insecure as it is and no amount of updates is going to secure it. Just use it and be happy until you can afford to buy a new machine or until you drop dead. You must be the oldest person on these newsgroups. /--- This email has been checked for viruses by Windows Defender software. //https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows/comprehensive-security/ -- With over 600 million devices now running Windows 10, customer satisfaction is higher than any previous version of windows. |
#3
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Latest guidance re how to get updates
none wrote:
Got an Averatec 3150P laptop still running XP Pro after 15 years, maybe because I only drag it out nowadays on or maybe shortly after Patch Tuesday to see if it still boots up and can snag whatever updates are available. I was doing this via the registry hack that spoofed XP Imbedded and POSReady 2009 (the one that promised updates until next year). This worked fine until some event-don't recall exactly what now-prompted Microsoft to temporarily resume updating XP a little while back. Last updates I successfully got were at the end of March (little late updating that month and have slacked off since). Anyway, we're back to the eternal "searching for updates" issue and Microsoft Security Essentials, which HAD started working again, now won't update even after searching overnight. Any ideas as to where I should go from here? Really would like to get those last few months of updates that hack promised. I'm not set up for that particular combo (WinXP + WePOS), but the Wsusoffline people had an approach for this. For example, if updating Vista, they had a list of updates that must be done first, to prevent Vista from "spinning". This was the "wupre" list in their installer. Unfortunately, the list was never developed for WinXP (52?). W60 or Vista was the oldest supported. So I can't dig into the 9.2.4 legacy version and pull that rabbit out of a hat. http://download.wsusoffline.net/ ESR version 23.03.2018 Version 9.2.4 This is the kind of file you'd consult, but there isn't one for WinXP. wsusoffline\client\static\ StaticUpdateIds-wupre-w60.txt ******* It's known that there are perhaps five things that drive supersedence nuts on WinXP. Kernel patches GDI patches ATM (adobe type manager) font rendering patches Internet Explorer Cumulative Updates (To a lesser extent, maybe Killbits) MSRT monthly AV scanner, scans for top 50 pests Each of these patch trees is deep, and the latest patch supersedes a hundred patches before it. WU goes "exponential" trying to work all of that out. For example, all it would take is a freshly released IE Cumulative to make WU spin in circles again. As an example here, I can see that WePOS got an IE8 patch in May2018. You'll notice the size is a fraction of the Windows 7 one, which is weird. Cumulative updates to Internet Explorer usually involve a complete IE installer, which just installs a fresh copy. That's what the ~50MB file would normally be doing. https://s33.postimg.cc/6p2xtt9wf/catalog_server.gif In terms of "spinning in circles" time saved, installing the latest IE Cumulative, reduces the time to wait for the Update List to appear by about 40%. There's still a significant delay caused by the others. The first three items in the list, cause madness. The official download page for MSRT doesn't include WinXP coverage. And the catalog server doesn't have "malicious software removal tool" for Windows XP. In any case, to stop the spinning, that's the basic theme. ******* There is a scanner for making an update list. This does the same thing as Windows Update, only with less spinning. If this gave a list of 70 updates to do, about 68 of the updates you'd *manually* download would install, and 2 updates would refuse to install. That's because whatever method is used here, isn't quite as thorough as the built-in WU method. But this tool can also hint at things to install to stop the spinning. The Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer (MBSA) 2.3 is available he https://www.microsoft.com/en-ca/down...s.aspx?id=7558 This shows a picture of the MBSA dialog window, where you set some tick boxes. First it downloads the wsusscn2.cab file (200MB), then it works out updates. It only downloads fresh copies of that file once a day, so if you do two runs of MBSA in quick succession, the second run doesn't do a download. The update numbers may help you identify which prerequisite updates you need to stop the spinning. http://s12.postimg.cc/4df2ka8bh/mbsa.gif I've not tried that with the WePOS hack, and I don't recollect seeing WePOS associated with MBSA. But, it's something else you can try. Vista is such a ******* at this stuff, that it took me three tries in VM setups, with a cost of two solid days of work each, before I could get a Vista update window to appear. WinXP isn't quite as bad as Vista, and if you wait long enough, that WU window will appear. For the Vista case, it was the list of updates to install in the "StaticUpdateIds-wupre-w60.txt" that fixed the thing. So for Vista users, you do have a chance to stop the spinning. But for WinXP, all we've got is some "principles of operation" to work with, to regain control. I've wasted days and days on this stuff. I've worked on WinXP and Vista multiple times. I've done Win7 and Win8.1 runs. Windows 10 goes nuts, only once in a blue moon, and resetting WU sometimes helps there. Win7 and Win8.1 now use Cumulative Updates, and for the most part, the spinning there is stopped (there is work to do on a fresh install though). If you do a fresh install of Vista today, you'd better have that wupre file handy. For WinXP/WePOS, well, you're on your own so to speak. Good luck, Paul |
#4
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Latest guidance re how to get updates
none wrote:
Got an Averatec 3150P laptop still running XP Pro after 15 years, maybe because I only drag it out nowadays on or maybe shortly after Patch Tuesday to see if it still boots up and can snag whatever updates are available. I was doing this via the registry hack that spoofed XP Imbedded and POSReady 2009 (the one that promised updates until next year). This worked fine until some event-don't recall exactly what now-prompted Microsoft to temporarily resume updating XP a little while back. Last updates I successfully got were at the end of March (little late updating that month and have slacked off since). Anyway, we're back to the eternal "searching for updates" issue and Microsoft Security Essentials, which HAD started working again, now won't update even after searching overnight. Any ideas as to where I should go from here? Really would like to get those last few months of updates that hack promised. I ran MBSA 2.3 and made a list of updates. I tried a few at first (2018-05 and 2018-04), and that didn't stop the Windows Update looping. So I blasted in the rest (all the outstanding ones listed in the output of an MBSA 2.3 scan)... https://s33.postimg.cc/k8tvtlfwf/blast_in_updates.gif And all I got out of the effort is: 1) MBSA 2.3 broke, and no longer comes back from a scan. That's never ever happened before here. 2) Windows Update still spins in a loop (one core railed). 3) The WU Update History appears borked. I don't think I can see the installed updates, which perhaps is normal. At least the OS still boots :-/ On the "borked" scale, this is roughly as bad as Vista now. Vista behaves like that on Windows Update. Microsoft should be proud. Paul |
#5
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Latest guidance re how to get updates
none wrote:
Got an Averatec 3150P laptop still running XP Pro after 15 years, maybe because I only drag it out nowadays on or maybe shortly after Patch Tuesday to see if it still boots up and can snag whatever updates are available. I was doing this via the registry hack that spoofed XP Imbedded and POSReady 2009 (the one that promised updates until next year). This worked fine until some event-don't recall exactly what now-prompted Microsoft to temporarily resume updating XP a little while back. Last updates I successfully got were at the end of March (little late updating that month and have slacked off since). Anyway, we're back to the eternal "searching for updates" issue and Microsoft Security Essentials, which HAD started working again, now won't update even after searching overnight. Any ideas as to where I should go from here? Really would like to get those last few months of updates that hack promised. OK, I have something for you to try. Early on in my experiments with a WinXP/PosReady setup in a VM, I got "tricked" into using the IE8 Cumulative with this KB number. It turns out KB4018271 is not the correct IE8 update. It installs OK and everything, but it fouls up the supersedence big time. It even has the same release number as the correct one. IE8-WindowsXP-KB4018271-x86-Custom-ENU.exe 10,974,448 bytes ******* When I installed WinXP in a VM a second time, this time I installed wsusoffline first (9.2.4 capture) into WinXP. Then set the PosReady "Installed" registry entry DWORD to 1. When I ran MBSA 2.3 security analyzer, it gave me a reference to KB4230450 being missing. As soon as I went to catalog.update.microsoft.com and realized it was a Cumulative, I knew I'd been tricked on the first one. ie8-windowsxp-kb4230450-x86-embedded-enu_d8b388624d07b6804485d347be4f74a985d50be7.exe 10,976,960 bytes If you go to catalog.update.microsoft.com with firefox and enter kb4230450 then scroll down until you find the PosReady one, you should be able to click the Download button on the right and download the 10,976,960 byte file. (Different language choices will have a different sized file.) Once you execute the EXE, your copy of IE8 will be updated. I did a reboot at that point. Then visited Windows Update, and damn if my symptoms didn't change for the better. WU seemed responsive. I couldn't complete the experiment because of needing to install WGA (890120???) on an unactivated copy of WinXP, so the experiment ends there. But it does give the appearance of being functional, as far as I can test it. Anyway, that's the breadcrumb of the day - comes with no guarantees. I assume you're running IE8, because I doubt there are any more Cumulatives for the others (they're out of support), and you would not have received any updates unless you were running a version of IE that was completely up to date. So the idea is, if this happens again, hunt down the (correct) Cumulative that month for IE8 and install it. New Cumulatives for IE used to come out monthly, and if you don't install it first (before running WU), then WU takes a lot longer to paint the screen. Paul |
#6
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Latest guidance re how to get updates
On Sat, 16 Jun 2018 04:56:08 -0400, Paul
wrote: none wrote: Got an Averatec 3150P laptop still running XP Pro after 15 years, maybe because I only drag it out nowadays on or maybe shortly after Patch Tuesday to see if it still boots up and can snag whatever updates are available. I was doing this via the registry hack that spoofed XP Imbedded and POSReady 2009 (the one that promised updates until next year). This worked fine until some event-don't recall exactly what now-prompted Microsoft to temporarily resume updating XP a little while back. Last updates I successfully got were at the end of March (little late updating that month and have slacked off since). Anyway, we're back to the eternal "searching for updates" issue and Microsoft Security Essentials, which HAD started working again, now won't update even after searching overnight. Any ideas as to where I should go from here? Really would like to get those last few months of updates that hack promised. OK, I have something for you to try. Early on in my experiments with a WinXP/PosReady setup in a VM, I got "tricked" into using the IE8 Cumulative with this KB number. It turns out KB4018271 is not the correct IE8 update. It installs OK and everything, but it fouls up the supersedence big time. It even has the same release number as the correct one. IE8-WindowsXP-KB4018271-x86-Custom-ENU.exe 10,974,448 bytes Looks like since malware did not take down XP, M$ showed its hand. Offering a deliberately buggy update is probably the sneakiest way to trash a system. Typical M$. Note the above is not your typical MSI/CAB installer. "Hey, XP is quirky - I'll have to buy a dumb terminal after all" - User. []'s ******* When I installed WinXP in a VM a second time, this time I installed wsusoffline first (9.2.4 capture) into WinXP. Then set the PosReady "Installed" registry entry DWORD to 1. When I ran MBSA 2.3 security analyzer, it gave me a reference to KB4230450 being missing. As soon as I went to catalog.update.microsoft.com and realized it was a Cumulative, I knew I'd been tricked on the first one. ie8-windowsxp-kb4230450-x86-embedded-enu_d8b388624d07b6804485d347be4f74a985d50be7.exe 10,976,960 bytes If you go to catalog.update.microsoft.com with firefox and enter kb4230450 then scroll down until you find the PosReady one, you should be able to click the Download button on the right and download the 10,976,960 byte file. (Different language choices will have a different sized file.) Once you execute the EXE, your copy of IE8 will be updated. I did a reboot at that point. Then visited Windows Update, and damn if my symptoms didn't change for the better. WU seemed responsive. I couldn't complete the experiment because of needing to install WGA (890120???) on an unactivated copy of WinXP, so the experiment ends there. But it does give the appearance of being functional, as far as I can test it. Anyway, that's the breadcrumb of the day - comes with no guarantees. I assume you're running IE8, because I doubt there are any more Cumulatives for the others (they're out of support), and you would not have received any updates unless you were running a version of IE that was completely up to date. So the idea is, if this happens again, hunt down the (correct) Cumulative that month for IE8 and install it. New Cumulatives for IE used to come out monthly, and if you don't install it first (before running WU), then WU takes a lot longer to paint the screen. Paul -- Don't be evil - Google 2004 We have a new policy - Google 2012 |
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