19 ms·

Legacy Update: Fix Windows Update on Windows XP, Vista, Server 2008, 2003, 2000

287 points by weissbier 4y ago

accrual 4y ago
I haven't tried this personally but I'm already a huge fan of it. I build and benchmark various retro PCs and some of them are fast enough to be fully patched, which I do if it's an option. For XP I really like the unofficial SP4 service pack which rolls up all post-SP3 updates into a single executable, with or without .NET. The later POS-only patches are also available. It makes it really simple to bring an old system "up to date", even if the last update was a couple years ago. These machines are just for fun of course and I don't do real work on them, and I'm behind NAT and monitor my traffic, so I'm not really worried about these systems.
- ryandrake 4y ago
  I agree, this is excellent! Honestly, shame on Microsoft that these sorts of things have to be a community-produced and delivered. Not singling Microsoft out, either--most software vendors' support for older products is abysmal. I'm tired of the attitude in the software industry of only maintaining back to some arbitrary time (mere years!), inevitably leaving users of older systems out in the cold. Unpopular opinion, but if you can't be assed to support a product for the duration that it's deployed in the field, you probably shouldn't release it to begin with.
  - zinekeller 4y ago
    > Unpopular opinion, but if you can't be assed to support a product for the duration that it's deployed in the field, you probably shouldn't release it to begin with. I think that the ball is on everyone still sticking on it - It was clear that Windows XP was supposed to be supported only for 10 years and they relent it and extend it to be 14 years. At that point it's clear that the companies who can't move, especially big ones, are the ones who are reckless.
- IntelMiner 4y ago
  I made the mistake of talking about retro systems in a large (600~ plus) slack chat at work a while back. There was a new guy to the company who turned out to be a red teamer He tried to argue that the kinds of ancient malware that XP would be vulnerable to (Blaster, Sasser, ILOVEYOU etc) were somehow still threats to be concerned about in 2022 (nearly 2023!) against modern operating systems because "I literally wrote my thesis on attacking Windows Defender" Has anyone (aside from Dancoot on youtube) tried to actually threat model this kind of thing? I find it hard to believe that 20-30 year old malware can even function let alone be a threat either to modern machines or modern networks. There's no way my Windows 98 gaming PC is going to breach the security of my Win10 laptop
londons_explore 4y ago
I love the style/theme of the site. I might use it on some of my own sites too. I think it's now old enough to be cool again...
zaggynl 4y ago
Neat, could one combine this with https://download.wsusoffline.net/ https://download.wsusoffline.net/ ? Edit: would need to pull from https://archive.org/search.php?query=wsusoffline&sin= https://archive.org/search.php?query=wsusoffline&sin= I guess
WhackyIdeas 4y ago
I am very curious of how long it would take to be ‘pwned’ whilst browsing the web with internet explorer on XP. Seconds, minutes, hours? Time to fire up a VM I think.
- hulitu 4y ago
  Years ? I don't know if the newest ransomware runs on Win XP.
  - danogentili 4y ago
    Actually, it would make perfect sense for malware to rely very heavily on backwards compatibility and old exploits.
- causality0 4y ago
  Depends on your browsing habits. If you're only visiting a handful of trustworthy websites maybe never. If you spend nine hours a day on bootleg hentai streaming sites, maybe very quickly.
  - WhackyIdeas 4y ago
    Maybe. See we had a trusted B2B site we use for stock. Then we noticed our bank account being raided. Turns out they had hackers on their system skimming all the card details. Maybe they were hosting on XP. Didn’t ask.
  - badsectoracula 4y ago
    Chances are said bootleg hentai streaming sites wont work on IE6 anyway.
  - grishka 4y ago
    Probably also depends on whether you have Flash Player installed and which version.
- mmcgaha 4y ago
  A long time because the old TLS does not let you connect to modern servers.
synaesthesisx 4y ago
It amazes me how many machines there are still out there, connected to the internet, running Windows XP (a 21+ year old OS)
- MuffinFlavored 4y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_kernel_version_history https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_kernel_version_history I wonder if there is a sizable position easily identifiable Linux 2.6.x running out there.
  - Lammy 4y ago
    Lots of old Androids https://android.stackexchange.com/questions/51651/which-android-runs-which-linux-kernel https://android.stackexchange.com/questions/51651/which-andr...
  - doodlesdev 4y ago
    There probably are a lot of NAS all around the world still running that version, probably somewhat patched with some backporting though.
  - dezgeg 4y ago
    Plenty of routers (especially on Broadcom chipset).
- bambax 4y ago
  I'm amazed you're amazed. I use cutlery that's 150 years old, every day, tableware that's over 80 years old, even kitchen rags of the same age. My dryer is 20 years old and works fine. I wear shoes, coats, sweaters that are over 15 years old. My main stereo system is 25 years old; even the Sonos components (that I hate) are over 15 years old and still work ok. I kept a motorbike for 25 years, and then eventually it was stolen (which meant the thieves still found it interesting). I don't understand why tech that works should be thrown out just because there's new tech. New tech has to offer incredible new possibilities to offset the hassle of change. My main system runs Win7 on hardware that's 10-15 years old and it does everything. I also have a couple of laptops running Win10 and I have yet to find what they do better, except being annoying and "different" for the sake of it.
slt2021 4y ago
For the love of god just get off of thece ancient systems pls, or run the only in airgapped and isolated network segments with application whitelisting and manual data ingress/egress controls, and everything will be fine without these silly updates. Just bury the body already, let winxp rest in peace, please
- causality0 4y ago
  Give me a new Windows that isn't dripping with contempt for the user.
  - danogentili 4y ago
    What about switching to Linux? :) If you're running legacy OSes, you're most definitely not playing recent games with DRM or doing anything that can't be done on a recent Linux system.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - archontes 4y ago
      I still believe that linux is unsuitable for the vast majority of people. I virtualize all of my workstations with proxmox, and have the ability to backup and restore snapshots quickly, and without that ability, the number of times a gui recommended kernel update would just kill large portions of my system is too damn high. Kernel 5.15 still seems to be incompatible with running two monitors on a GTX 1080TI with any of the proprietary nvidia drivers I've tried.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - StillBored 4y ago
        What you give up with linux is the hardware compatibility. The linux bigots would say you get better HW compatibility but that is only true if your HW is old junk the manufacture abandoned years back. Nvidia tends to be a bit of a no-no when it comes to linux these days because of the wayland fiasco (and others), although it might be getting better with their latest opensource driver efforts. Who knows, but the fact does remain that linux's refusal to have a binary driver ABI fsk's anything that doesn't have an opensource driver, so usually just make sure one exists before even trying the HW.
Animats 4y ago
I could see staying with Windows 7. That was the best version Microsoft ever made. Microsoft finally figured out how to make it stable, and it didn't have all the ad and cloud crap nailed in. You can run current Firefox, current Thunderbird, and current LibreOffice, which covers the basics. Most Windows software still works.
- Koshkin 4y ago
  > That was the best version Microsoft ever made No. 7 was a rollback on Vista. The best one which was not a step back but rather a step forward was Windows 2000. (Some even swear by NT4, which I feel also has some merit.)
  - nix23 4y ago
    I think WindowsServer2003R2 was the best OS Microsoft ever made, then XP >SP2 and Windows2000, then Win7.
    - Koshkin 4y ago
      As to "the best OS Microsoft has ever made," it was OS/2 (which they abandoned in favor of the "hugely successful" Windows 3.0 which was clearly inferior on all technical accounts).
      - nix23 4y ago
        That was made by IBM AND Microsoft, but if we go so far Xenix was the best os MS ever made/buy'd ;)
    - EvanAnderson 4y ago
      I used Server 2003 R2 as a daily driver on a laptop for a couple of years pre-Windows 7. It was very nice. Most Windows XP software would work fine.
    - StillBored 4y ago
      Yes 2003 64-bit was the first official 64-bit x86 windows and is probably the largest advance over 2000, and there really hasn't been anything since that is as large a technical capability addition. I'm on the fence, but frequently say that 2000 was probably the best. Then I have to qualify that maybe the preview 64-bit XP or full win2003 might be first or in the running because 64-bit is such a major/critical feature to modern computer that if you wanted to sell a modern "Windows for business" release you would have to pick one of the 64-bit versions rather than rolling back to 2k. I too ran 2k3 (64-bit of course on my athlon64) for a while as a desktop and technically it was fantastic, but eventually ended up switching back to XP with a few hacks to just avoid the general issue that a number of pieces of desktop software refused to run on a "server OS" without buying the server license for $$$$.
Koshkin 4y ago
I wish ReactOS were ready by now...
- RachelF 4y ago
  I've been wishing that for the last 15 years.
- grishka 4y ago
  Well, at least they have a somewhat limited scope to work with — there haven't been significant WinAPI updates for more then 10 years, unless you include things like modern DirectX. I do wish they worked differently though. They're trying to build the entire thing from scratch all at once, but it would've made much more sense if they took a Windows installation and started replacing Microsoft components one by one with their own until there are none left. This would guarantee 100% compatibility with everything imaginable, because you get complete integration testing for free, and probably won't break any licenses either. Didn't the Haiku project use this approach with BeOS?
  - immibis 4y ago
    It would be a derivative work of Windows.
armagon 4y ago
This is so exciting. I've got an old netbook and decided to put back on the OS it originally came with, Windows 7 Starter. I was so surprised when I couldn't run updates; I finally attributed it to having old security certificates, but couldn't figure out how to update them, and some important updates that I installed on other computers (a number of HTTPS sites are impossible to see without the right certs) and copied over would not install. Such a pain. And here, just like that, Windows 7 SP1 is installing. To those who made this: Thank you so much!
bluedino 4y ago
Work firewall does not want me going to this site.
footlose_3815 4y ago
[dead]
ck2 4y ago
Source: https://github.com/kirb/LegacyUpdate/releases https://github.com/kirb/LegacyUpdate/releases Windows 7 ESU ends January 2023 Should be interesting to see what all the corporations still using it do. Also ATMs
neonihil 4y ago
One moment of silence for our brothers and sisters still using windows. /salute XD
p-e-w 4y ago
Microsoft was wise to fear open source. If Windows XP had been free software, the vast majority of institutions would have just kept using it and Microsoft's future OS sales would have plummeted, along with all the ad and user data revenue that they indirectly generate. Instead, being closed source, Microsoft can just force users to update to systems that they don't want, by withholding critical security fixes and features that are required to use the modern web. And there's almost nothing the users can do about it, because they have no meaningful control over the system they are running. It's pure genius.
- chii 4y ago
  > by withholding critical security fixes and features that are required to use the modern web to play the devil's advocate, you're saying that microsoft should continuously make critical security fixes for old OS versions, add updates/features with which modern web requires to function, all while not taking any income except for the initial payment purchase price? No business could do this. Edit: to make the point, i would say that microsoft _should_ charge a subscription for old versions of windows, and use that revenue to upkeep it, instead of pushing what they're pushing right now.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
mr_woozy 4y ago

287 points by weissbier 4y ago

I haven't tried this personally but I'm already a huge fan of it. I build and benchmark various retro PCs and some of them are fast enough to be fully patched, which I do if it's an option. For XP I really like the unofficial SP4 service pack which rolls up all post-SP3 updates into a single executable, with or without .NET. The later POS-only patches are also available. It makes it really simple to bring an old system "up to date", even if the last update was a couple years ago. These machines are just for fun of course and I don't do real work on them, and I'm behind NAT and monitor my traffic, so I'm not really worried about these systems.

ryandrake 4y ago
I agree, this is excellent! Honestly, shame on Microsoft that these sorts of things have to be a community-produced and delivered. Not singling Microsoft out, either--most software vendors' support for older products is abysmal. I'm tired of the attitude in the software industry of only maintaining back to some arbitrary time (mere years!), inevitably leaving users of older systems out in the cold. Unpopular opinion, but if you can't be assed to support a product for the duration that it's deployed in the field, you probably shouldn't release it to begin with.
- zinekeller 4y ago
  > Unpopular opinion, but if you can't be assed to support a product for the duration that it's deployed in the field, you probably shouldn't release it to begin with. I think that the ball is on everyone still sticking on it - It was clear that Windows XP was supposed to be supported only for 10 years and they relent it and extend it to be 14 years. At that point it's clear that the companies who can't move, especially big ones, are the ones who are reckless.
IntelMiner 4y ago
I made the mistake of talking about retro systems in a large (600~ plus) slack chat at work a while back. There was a new guy to the company who turned out to be a red teamer He tried to argue that the kinds of ancient malware that XP would be vulnerable to (Blaster, Sasser, ILOVEYOU etc) were somehow still threats to be concerned about in 2022 (nearly 2023!) against modern operating systems because "I literally wrote my thesis on attacking Windows Defender" Has anyone (aside from Dancoot on youtube) tried to actually threat model this kind of thing? I find it hard to believe that 20-30 year old malware can even function let alone be a threat either to modern machines or modern networks. There's no way my Windows 98 gaming PC is going to breach the security of my Win10 laptop

londons_explore 4y ago

I love the style/theme of the site. I might use it on some of my own sites too. I think it's now old enough to be cool again...

zaggynl 4y ago

Neat, could one combine this with https://download.wsusoffline.net/ https://download.wsusoffline.net/ ? Edit: would need to pull from https://archive.org/search.php?query=wsusoffline&sin= https://archive.org/search.php?query=wsusoffline&sin= I guess

WhackyIdeas 4y ago

I am very curious of how long it would take to be ‘pwned’ whilst browsing the web with internet explorer on XP. Seconds, minutes, hours? Time to fire up a VM I think.

hulitu 4y ago
Years ? I don't know if the newest ransomware runs on Win XP.
- danogentili 4y ago
  Actually, it would make perfect sense for malware to rely very heavily on backwards compatibility and old exploits.
causality0 4y ago
Depends on your browsing habits. If you're only visiting a handful of trustworthy websites maybe never. If you spend nine hours a day on bootleg hentai streaming sites, maybe very quickly.
- WhackyIdeas 4y ago
  Maybe. See we had a trusted B2B site we use for stock. Then we noticed our bank account being raided. Turns out they had hackers on their system skimming all the card details. Maybe they were hosting on XP. Didn’t ask.
- badsectoracula 4y ago
  Chances are said bootleg hentai streaming sites wont work on IE6 anyway.
- grishka 4y ago
  Probably also depends on whether you have Flash Player installed and which version.
mmcgaha 4y ago
A long time because the old TLS does not let you connect to modern servers.

synaesthesisx 4y ago

It amazes me how many machines there are still out there, connected to the internet, running Windows XP (a 21+ year old OS)

MuffinFlavored 4y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_kernel_version_history https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_kernel_version_history I wonder if there is a sizable position easily identifiable Linux 2.6.x running out there.
- Lammy 4y ago
  Lots of old Androids https://android.stackexchange.com/questions/51651/which-android-runs-which-linux-kernel https://android.stackexchange.com/questions/51651/which-andr...
- doodlesdev 4y ago
  There probably are a lot of NAS all around the world still running that version, probably somewhat patched with some backporting though.
- dezgeg 4y ago
  Plenty of routers (especially on Broadcom chipset).
bambax 4y ago
I'm amazed you're amazed. I use cutlery that's 150 years old, every day, tableware that's over 80 years old, even kitchen rags of the same age. My dryer is 20 years old and works fine. I wear shoes, coats, sweaters that are over 15 years old. My main stereo system is 25 years old; even the Sonos components (that I hate) are over 15 years old and still work ok. I kept a motorbike for 25 years, and then eventually it was stolen (which meant the thieves still found it interesting). I don't understand why tech that works should be thrown out just because there's new tech. New tech has to offer incredible new possibilities to offset the hassle of change. My main system runs Win7 on hardware that's 10-15 years old and it does everything. I also have a couple of laptops running Win10 and I have yet to find what they do better, except being annoying and "different" for the sake of it.

slt2021 4y ago

For the love of god just get off of thece ancient systems pls, or run the only in airgapped and isolated network segments with application whitelisting and manual data ingress/egress controls, and everything will be fine without these silly updates. Just bury the body already, let winxp rest in peace, please

causality0 4y ago
Give me a new Windows that isn't dripping with contempt for the user.
- danogentili 4y ago
  What about switching to Linux? :) If you're running legacy OSes, you're most definitely not playing recent games with DRM or doing anything that can't be done on a recent Linux system.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - archontes 4y ago
    I still believe that linux is unsuitable for the vast majority of people. I virtualize all of my workstations with proxmox, and have the ability to backup and restore snapshots quickly, and without that ability, the number of times a gui recommended kernel update would just kill large portions of my system is too damn high. Kernel 5.15 still seems to be incompatible with running two monitors on a GTX 1080TI with any of the proprietary nvidia drivers I've tried.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - StillBored 4y ago
      What you give up with linux is the hardware compatibility. The linux bigots would say you get better HW compatibility but that is only true if your HW is old junk the manufacture abandoned years back. Nvidia tends to be a bit of a no-no when it comes to linux these days because of the wayland fiasco (and others), although it might be getting better with their latest opensource driver efforts. Who knows, but the fact does remain that linux's refusal to have a binary driver ABI fsk's anything that doesn't have an opensource driver, so usually just make sure one exists before even trying the HW.

Animats 4y ago

I could see staying with Windows 7. That was the best version Microsoft ever made. Microsoft finally figured out how to make it stable, and it didn't have all the ad and cloud crap nailed in. You can run current Firefox, current Thunderbird, and current LibreOffice, which covers the basics. Most Windows software still works.

Koshkin 4y ago
> That was the best version Microsoft ever made No. 7 was a rollback on Vista. The best one which was not a step back but rather a step forward was Windows 2000. (Some even swear by NT4, which I feel also has some merit.)
- nix23 4y ago
  I think WindowsServer2003R2 was the best OS Microsoft ever made, then XP >SP2 and Windows2000, then Win7.
  - Koshkin 4y ago
    As to "the best OS Microsoft has ever made," it was OS/2 (which they abandoned in favor of the "hugely successful" Windows 3.0 which was clearly inferior on all technical accounts).
    - nix23 4y ago
      That was made by IBM AND Microsoft, but if we go so far Xenix was the best os MS ever made/buy'd ;)
  - EvanAnderson 4y ago
    I used Server 2003 R2 as a daily driver on a laptop for a couple of years pre-Windows 7. It was very nice. Most Windows XP software would work fine.
  - StillBored 4y ago
    Yes 2003 64-bit was the first official 64-bit x86 windows and is probably the largest advance over 2000, and there really hasn't been anything since that is as large a technical capability addition. I'm on the fence, but frequently say that 2000 was probably the best. Then I have to qualify that maybe the preview 64-bit XP or full win2003 might be first or in the running because 64-bit is such a major/critical feature to modern computer that if you wanted to sell a modern "Windows for business" release you would have to pick one of the 64-bit versions rather than rolling back to 2k. I too ran 2k3 (64-bit of course on my athlon64) for a while as a desktop and technically it was fantastic, but eventually ended up switching back to XP with a few hacks to just avoid the general issue that a number of pieces of desktop software refused to run on a "server OS" without buying the server license for $$$$.

Koshkin 4y ago

I wish ReactOS were ready by now...

RachelF 4y ago
I've been wishing that for the last 15 years.
grishka 4y ago
Well, at least they have a somewhat limited scope to work with — there haven't been significant WinAPI updates for more then 10 years, unless you include things like modern DirectX. I do wish they worked differently though. They're trying to build the entire thing from scratch all at once, but it would've made much more sense if they took a Windows installation and started replacing Microsoft components one by one with their own until there are none left. This would guarantee 100% compatibility with everything imaginable, because you get complete integration testing for free, and probably won't break any licenses either. Didn't the Haiku project use this approach with BeOS?
- immibis 4y ago
  It would be a derivative work of Windows.

armagon 4y ago

This is so exciting. I've got an old netbook and decided to put back on the OS it originally came with, Windows 7 Starter. I was so surprised when I couldn't run updates; I finally attributed it to having old security certificates, but couldn't figure out how to update them, and some important updates that I installed on other computers (a number of HTTPS sites are impossible to see without the right certs) and copied over would not install. Such a pain. And here, just like that, Windows 7 SP1 is installing. To those who made this: Thank you so much!

bluedino 4y ago

Work firewall does not want me going to this site.

footlose_3815 4y ago

[dead]

ck2 4y ago

Source: https://github.com/kirb/LegacyUpdate/releases https://github.com/kirb/LegacyUpdate/releases Windows 7 ESU ends January 2023 Should be interesting to see what all the corporations still using it do. Also ATMs

neonihil 4y ago

One moment of silence for our brothers and sisters still using windows. /salute XD

p-e-w 4y ago

Microsoft was wise to fear open source. If Windows XP had been free software, the vast majority of institutions would have just kept using it and Microsoft's future OS sales would have plummeted, along with all the ad and user data revenue that they indirectly generate. Instead, being closed source, Microsoft can just force users to update to systems that they don't want, by withholding critical security fixes and features that are required to use the modern web. And there's almost nothing the users can do about it, because they have no meaningful control over the system they are running. It's pure genius.

chii 4y ago
> by withholding critical security fixes and features that are required to use the modern web to play the devil's advocate, you're saying that microsoft should continuously make critical security fixes for old OS versions, add updates/features with which modern web requires to function, all while not taking any income except for the initial payment purchase price? No business could do this. Edit: to make the point, i would say that microsoft _should_ charge a subscription for old versions of windows, and use that revenue to upkeep it, instead of pushing what they're pushing right now.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

mr_woozy 4y ago