[HN Gopher] Windows Update Restored: Fix Windows update on Windo...
___________________________________________________________________
Windows Update Restored: Fix Windows update on Windows 95, 98, ME,
2000, and XP
Author : gslin
Score : 230 points
Date : 2023-07-07 12:25 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (windowsupdaterestored.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (windowsupdaterestored.com)
| nashashmi wrote:
| Seems like a centralized repository for a collection of updates
| issued by MS to windows computers. Does this bring additional
| security updates not issued by MS?
| jdwithit wrote:
| No, it's just old preexisting patches. In their FAQ and even on
| the front page they say continuing to run these operating
| systems is a terrible idea as they are highly vulnerable even
| after patching.
| cbmuser wrote:
| What's the advantage over Legacy Update which seems to work
| pretty well.
| temp51723 wrote:
| Legacy Update doesn't support Windows 95, Windows NT 4.0 SP3+
| Windows 98 First and Second Edition, Windows Millenium Edition.
|
| Windows Update Restored (purportedly) does.
| cbmuser wrote:
| Thanks, this answers my question.
| winterqt wrote:
| For context: https://legacyupdate.net
| JohnTHaller wrote:
| Legacy Update is a better option for Windows 2000 and later as
| it uses a proxied Windows Update 6 implementation. Windows
| Update Restored uses Windows Update 3.1 and is better for
| Windows 95/98/Me and Windows NT4.
| neilv wrote:
| This seems like a nice altruistic useful thing, but (given some
| overly-trusting security practices we still often see) it'd still
| be good practice to keep some ideas in mind...
|
| DECREASING LEVELS OF SECURITY:
|
| 1. Running Microsoft Windows.
|
| 2. Running out-of-support Microsoft Windows.
|
| 3. Running out-of-support Microsoft Windows and having it report
| itself to a server of unclear provenance and security (which
| could be efficiently indexing such insecure machines, and
| possibly even exploiting vulnerabilities during this simple
| interaction).
|
| 4. Running out-of-support Microsoft Windows and updating its
| system software from a server of unclear provenance and security
| (which could install malware, possibly even defeating any
| outdated vendor signing).
|
| SUGGESTIONS:
|
| * If your important science/medical/industrial/etc. equipment is
| stuck on ancient Microsoft Windows, probably you want to keep it
| airgapped and treat it gingerly, while planning to upgrade to
| more sustainable equipment (and hopefully it doesn't fail
| abruptly before convenient).
|
| * If you're playing with Microsoft Windows for personal use,
| that's fine, but maybe consider whether you'd prefer to spend
| your time and energy instead learning and creating atop an open
| source software platform.
|
| * For many business and personal purposes, Debian Stable is a
| good OS platform, and this is one installer for it:
| https://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/current/amd64/iso-dvd/
| housemusicfan wrote:
| I'm glad somebody brought this up. I was waiting for the
| follow-up article to post on HN about the "Botnet of Windows 98
| Machines"
| adamdegas wrote:
| Yes, all 48 of them.
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| > Running Microsoft Windows.
|
| Is Windows 11 with all of the _default_ security settings
| really that insecure? Like Windows Defender, Windows Firewall,
| anything that needs admin needed you to click "yes, elevate to
| admin" through UAC
| hospitalJail wrote:
| I just posted this above, but according to Zerodinium,
| Microsoft Zero Clicks are the highest payout for a desktop
| OS. Either they are the most secure, or its a popularity
| thing.
| olyjohn wrote:
| Also maybe because Windows is used heavily in enterprise
| where there is big money to be stolen from finance
| departments.
| jodrellblank wrote:
| "Be very careful connecting to some random server and running
| code from people you've never met, with whom you have no
| contract or legal comeback, just because other people are doing
| it. Also, download Debian!"
| anthk wrote:
| You can audit Debian, or rebuild it yourself. Try that with
| Windows.
| jodrellblank wrote:
| Debian had over 324 million lines of code in 2009. How do
| you propose to audit that in a lifetime?
|
| https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/111281/exploding-
| am...
| anthk wrote:
| So does Guix, and it has reproducibility features and
| rollbacks.
| p0w3n3d wrote:
| What about retro gaming?
| ungruntled wrote:
| Compared to Windows, I find that most linux desktop distros
| have what I would call 'stability vulnerabilities' where the
| user has to tread carefully when doing something basic like
| updating graphics drivers or applying other updates, or
| changing resolution. Otherwise they end up with an OS that wont
| start or will just show a blank screen. I wouldn't recommend
| linux for general business or personal use unless this kind of
| tinkering is enjoyable or you have sufficient IT staff.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Coincidentally, I ran into one of these this week. I decided
| to upgrade my bog-standard Debian installation on a headless
| NAS from buster to bookworm. Should have been easy peasy:
| Update sources.list and then apt full-upgrade, right?
|
| Wrong.
|
| Half way through, Debian seems to have lost[1] libcrypt.so.1,
| which everything important in the system relies on. Could no
| longer sudo (needs libcrypt) from the session I was logged
| into. Couldn't re-log in at all either over the network (ssh
| needs libcrypt) or locally (local authentication needs it
| too). Could not even get to single-user mode because
| init=/bin/bash didn't even work. I ended up having to boot
| from a liveCD, re-assemble the raid partition containing my
| root filesystem, and manually copy libcrypt into
| /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/
|
| All because I tried to upgrade Debian from 10 to 12, skipping
| a version, which, apparently you can't do anymore.
|
| As much as I can't stand Windows and I grin-and-bear macOS,
| I've never had an experience even close to as bad as that on
| those systems.
|
| 1: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=993755
| laserdancepony wrote:
| It was unsupported to jump releases while upgrading twenty
| years ago when upgrading woody to sarge as is now. Don't
| spread rumours. I've been there and the READMEs are still
| online for reference [1]. And unsupported does not mean
| impossible. One just can't blame the distro for a failed
| install.
|
| And if you had bothered to read the Release Notes for
| bookworm: It's in there [2]. Also you are instructed that
| only upgrades from bullseye are supported, and to upgrade
| to bullseye first if you are running an older version.
|
| Nobody else to blame for your fall.
|
| [1] https://www.debian.org/releases/sarge/i386/release-
| notes/ch-... [2]
| https://www.debian.org/releases/stable/amd64/release-
| notes/c...
| ryandrake wrote:
| I've been using Debian since before woody, and am well
| aware of the usual caution against jumping versions. I
| have jumped versions in the past with very little pain
| despite it being officially unsupported. Obviously this
| time I gambled and lost as it clearly breaks your system
| more severely than usual.
|
| None of that changes the user-experience comparison with
| mainstream OS's or parent's point about Linux's
| "'stability vulnerabilities' where the user has to tread
| carefully". Linux is well known for being a sharp tool
| without safety guards. That, and the "RTFM" tone of the
| typical response to trouble, are some reasons why the
| Year Of The Linux Desktop is perpetually stuck somewhere
| in the future.
| Propelloni wrote:
| I respect your individual experience but this hasn't been the
| mainstream situation for many years now.
|
| Back in 2012 I was the Head of IT for an A series start-up
| with about 80 people and we ran almost all machines on Linux
| (mostly Ubuntu) and it worked like a charm. We scaled to
| about 400 people before switching to Chromebooks in 2015 for
| the vast majority of users. Our IT operations team never had
| more than 4 FTE at any point in time, which compares very
| favorably with any other company. This was possible because
| Linux environments are extremely easy to maintain for a
| trained IT staff and, obviously, because we mostly avoided
| the MS Office crapware (which was less crappy back then than
| it is today). Google Suite served us fine and the rest was
| custom web-based software.
|
| Today I'm at a different company, no longer in the trenches,
| and use MS Windows machines for my work and there is not a
| single week going by without need to call tech support.
| Adding the counter-productive helpfulness of MS Office
| applications I sometimes think MS is paid by our competitors
| to destroy our productivity. That's a "stability
| vulnerability".
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| > changing resolution.
|
| Er, this decade? How would setting resolution go badly today?
| (The closest thing I can think of is that once upon a time
| you could mess up _CRTs_ with bad settings.)
| kdklol wrote:
| There are the same exact problems on Windows though.
| Microsoft nowadays basically treats it's install base as beta
| testers and you regularly hear about breaking updates. There
| are devices out there with funky drivers, most notably Nvidia
| cards, but if you can avoid those (I know many people can't,
| me included) and choose a stable distro, I genuinely fail to
| observe these supposed instabilities on Linux. Personally, I
| think the real reason why companies are not switching is
| familiarity. Think of all that money spent on MS product
| training over X employees. Billions are spent yearly in this
| industry I'm sure.
| emodendroket wrote:
| True but the older your hardware is the less you encounter
| it... so I guess the best use for it is giving life to old
| hardware.
| xslvrxslwt wrote:
| I'm sorry but this is all but true. I've a 13700K and a
| 4090 and it's more reliable than 2 of my old hardware
| machines..this is slowly becoming a myth unfortunately as
| new versions of either DEs or desktop protocol (s) are
| slowly deprecating tons of stuff..
| emodendroket wrote:
| I've had good luck with Xubuntu on a couple older
| machines so far but I'm not trying to run it on anything
| modern. My experience trying to do desktop Linux on a
| recent machine is quite old so maybe things are
| different.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| I would imagine this is only true to a certain point.
|
| Like, I would not be surprised if there were issues trying
| to run an AGP or PCI video card.
|
| There's probably a sweet spot where some hardware is old
| enough to have had all the major bugs worked out, but not
| so old that nobody bothers developing and testing it
| anymore.
| userbinator wrote:
| That's pure fearmongering FUD.
|
| Recommending Debian to the retrocomputing community is possibly
| the most tone-deaf thing I've seen today.
| mike_hock wrote:
| > That's pure fearmongering FUD.
|
| It is. It's a community project that you can trust, or not.
| Debian also reports to servers of "unknown provenance" and
| updates itself from there.
|
| Now, Debian has probably a lot more eyes on it than some
| Windows Update revival project, but some more niche distros
| have essentially the same problem.
|
| > Recommending Debian to the retrocomputing community is
| possibly the most tone-deaf thing I've seen today.
|
| archive.debian.org might be right up their alley
| ketralnis wrote:
| I'm with you that they could have stopped talking after the
| word "instead" but the rest is not fearmongering nor FUD:
| installing operating system patches from a random server on
| the internet just isn't a great idea
| ckozlowski wrote:
| This. I suppose it can't be helped given the link was posted
| without context. But yours is the only post here that seems
| to get it.
|
| For everyone else: This project exists for the joy of the
| retro-computing community. No one in their right mind -
| retro-computing enthusiasts included - would ever recommend
| using any of these versions of Windows for anything other
| than amusement.
|
| No, DOSBox is not always an alternative.
|
| Retro enthusiasts are quite excited by this project. And for
| anyone wanting to rebuild an old PC running Win95 for fun,
| this is going to be a very helpful tool.
|
| Michael MJD (YouTube) covered this yesterday in fact:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbeqLmSVqvs
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| >If you're playing with Microsoft Windows for personal use,
| _that 's fine,_
|
| Saying you're free to have your hobby isn't tone-deaf.
| hospitalJail wrote:
| I hate windows, like I'm trying to get off it because of the
| ads/ragebait news. I hate edge. Microsoft is basically a never
| buy anymore, but according to this:
|
| https://zerodium.com/program.html
|
| Getting a Windows exploit is higher value than any linux
| exploit. Given how many servers use Linux, it makes me wonder
| if Linux 0 click are easier than windows.
|
| There are a bunch of counters like 'there are too many
| distros', or 'a personal computer of a VIP is higher value than
| some corporations'. But I'm not sure its fair to include your
| point number 1.
|
| I like to give people credit where its due, I imagine it took
| lots of work to make windows as secure as it is. (Giving
| Android OS the most credit for their 2.5M payout)
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| > I hate edge.
|
| It's a thin wrapper around Blink just like Chrome/Chromium.
| What is there to "hate"?
| hospitalJail wrote:
| So many ads on the home page.
|
| 'turn it off'
|
| I did. But its not intuitive, its some settings button that
| is semi-transparent. I literally had to google/bing it.
|
| The inital setup was awful.
|
| Then it opening all my links in edge was not okay. I'm
| signed in on firefox, I don't want things opening in edge.
|
| I can't remember, I gave up after the whole BingGPT thing
| was a let down.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > What is there to "hate"?
|
| The endless fluff and clutter to clean up (Search bar
| appearing on desktop, sidebar foistware). The relentless
| marketing and push of adjacent services (Bing AI).
|
| The passive-aggressive IE compatibility mode (unremovable
| nag banner to stop using IECM, your Legacy App URLs expire
| after 30 days for no good reason).
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| Edge allegedly manages to be worse at privacy than Chrome:
| https://apple.slashdot.org/story/20/03/07/0054219/edge-
| brows...
| morpheuskafka wrote:
| It's strange to me that Thunderbird is even on their chart.
| Surely only a few free software enthusiasts use that anymore?
| Most of the population doesn't even use a desktop email
| client and if they do its work-provided Outlook to connect to
| Exchange/Office365.
| delfinom wrote:
| https://zerodium.com/faq.html
|
| >Zerodium reviews, tests, validates, and documents all
| acquired vulnerability research then provides it to
| institutional clients as part of the
|
| Zerodium only cares about shit their own customers want to
| target. They aren't trying to fund the entire world of
| software security.
|
| Their customers in particular are select governments
| wanting exploits for their own use. You can sure as shit
| bet they already have specific targets in mind and what
| they use.
|
| EDIT: For example, the forum software noted on Zerodium's
| list are popular for "blackhat" and "darkweb" forums from
| everything from card dump selling to malware. Many
| governments would love to get themselves a database dump
| with some user IPs. Conversely, this is why Discourse which
| is a major BB these days is missing as it's not popular in
| those circles.
| Dwedit wrote:
| Desktop Email Clients are good for downloading all your
| Gmail before Google randomly decides to nuke your account.
| laserdancepony wrote:
| I'm sure 99% of the population does not use email
| personally anymore, except for delivery of their Amazon
| invoices.
| bdavbdav wrote:
| Yep. Receipts and notifications. It's a bad means for
| communications.
| weare138 wrote:
| Linux is the just kernel. Everything else in a distro is
| software running on top of it. Kernel bugs are generally hard
| to exploit remotely and typically have to be chained with
| other exploits. That's why there's so many specific payouts
| for common enterprise apps. Windows is a complete, highly
| integrated OS with a wide array of attack vectors baked right
| into it.
|
| Plus sketchy companies like Zerodium major customers are
| nation-state actors who are primarily interested in data
| exfiltration and the application data stores themselves.
| hospitalJail wrote:
| >Kernel bugs are generally hard to exploit remotely and
| typically have to be chained with other exploits.
|
| This is why its so valuable though.
| weare138 wrote:
| The payouts are based on what their 'clients' are willing
| to pay in turn for the exploits. There's just less of a
| market for Linux kernel exploits. If nation-state actors
| are involved in deep APT style attacks where they would
| leverage low level kernel exploits they are going to
| either develop the exploits themselves or acquire them
| through their own clandestine channels. Purchasing that
| stuff from a publicly facing company that could
| potentially be compromised themselves is high risk and
| leaves too obvious of a trail.
| unilynx wrote:
| But what's the point ? Most vulnerable Linux servers are
| hosting blogs or dns servers. They're only useful to run
| a crypto miner or host a phishing page, and for that you
| probably don't need to go further than exploit a
| wordpress bug. No need to go for the kernel or even root.
|
| Whereas a desktop often has users on it who enter banking
| details or corporate login credentials. Much juicier
| targets.
| mnahkies wrote:
| Linux servers generally aren't being used interactively
| though and expose a fairly limited attack surface to the
| internet, and so I feel like the value in Linux server
| exploits is more in the openssl/Apache/etc vulnerabilities
| RobotToaster wrote:
| People always say this but
|
| 1) doesn't even a domestic router block all inbound
| connections?
|
| 2) is there any evidence of unpatched remote vulnerabilities
| for windows 98?
| userbinator wrote:
| Yes, and probably not (and even if there were, I suspect no
| one has a huge incentive to go looking for them anyway.)
| jabroni_salad wrote:
| I'll never accuse old Windows of being bulletproof, but I've
| gotten some considerable reliability out of old appliances by
| adding SSDs, a passively cooled chassis, and a weekly reboot
| scheduled task. Basically, just get rid of the moving parts and
| plan for state drift.
|
| Old OT is actually pretty easy to take care of aside from
| sourcing replacements for some secret sauce PCI card that is no
| longer made. New OT blurs the line with IT in a really
| difficult way however, you can no longer rely on a dead simple
| airgap to solve your security concerns because everything and
| its mother wants to be on the internet.
| fires10 wrote:
| You can not just rely on air gapped either. You have other
| avenues for attack as well. I actually virtualize most of my
| legacy OSes when possible. Just maintaining adequate serial
| connections when a USB to serial connector will not work with
| your legacy OS and a VM can't maintain a stable serial
| connection through the host OS. It's been a nightmare.
| majjam wrote:
| Does anyone have any experience with 0patch? I use it to keep a
| couple of old Win7 systems patched but it makes me nervous...
| klaussilveira wrote:
| Is ReactOS stable enough to replace an old Windows 95
| installation?
| jaclaz wrote:
| No matter if stable enough or not, ReactOS is aimed to
| replicate a NT based system, as such it can be very different
| from DOS/Win9x.
|
| Quite a lot of (DOS based but not only) tools and programs
| (particularly any low-level one and - generally speaking -
| games) that run just fine in Windows 95 won't work on NT
| 4.00/2000 and later, and they as well won't in ReactOS.
| sneed_chucker wrote:
| No.
| Paianni wrote:
| PSA: Security updates for 2000 and XP are still available from
| Microsoft at https://www.catalog.update.microsoft.com/
| add-sub-mul-div wrote:
| What I'd love is a project for Windows 11 that gives me back full
| control of which updates I download and when I reboot. I've been
| living with vague registry hacks and the "pause for 5 weeks"
| button but they're getting less effective.
| dmitrygr wrote:
| Use registry editor to export And then delete wupdsvc and
| waasMedicSvc services. (HKLM/system/currentControlSet/Services)
| Reboot. Enjoy. Whenever you want updates, double click exported
| "reg" file and reboot. Allow updates to install. Delete
| services again.
| npteljes wrote:
| I'm solving this for myself with Windows 10 LTSC, which I keep
| activated with an activation emulator I host. For a
| professional, it was super easy to setup, virtually zero
| maintenance, and I get a pass on at least a good chunk of the
| bullshit that goes on in the MS-verse. Functionality doesn't
| seem to be lost, but I just use it to play my multiplayer games
| because of their Windows-only rootkit, I mean, anti-cheat.
| rwaksmunski wrote:
| Lookup Windows 10 LTSC
| stalfosknight wrote:
| This should go without saying but this flagrant disregard for
| what users want is going to continue and get worse as long as
| people keep buying and using Windows. I wonder pretty often why
| people put themselves through this crap to use Windows.
| add-sub-mul-div wrote:
| Because I'm an adult who knows how to weigh all the pros and
| cons of a situation and make decisions based on the sum of
| that reasoning rather than the emotion raised by one pain
| point. (My own or someone else's.)
| stalfosknight wrote:
| Enjoy not having control over when or how your OS gets
| updated then.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Because that's what comes on computers, and that's what the
| software they need runs on. The obvious reasons. If you want
| to fix that, work in antitrust, work on getting at least
| governments and public schools to choose FOSS solutions, work
| on improving FOSS solutions, work on Debian installers...
| stalfosknight wrote:
| Windows didn't come preinstalled on my Mac.
| runesofdoom wrote:
| A possibly illustrative example:
|
| A year or three ago, my uncle (mid-50s, telco IT manager,
| started on a Commodore in the 80s) decided he'd try Mint
| instead of upgrading from Windows 7. He got it installed and
| running, and decided he wanted to burn an audio CD.
|
| His install of Mint didn't come with any application to
| accomplish this. He got something recommended installed
| easily enough, but it only supported FLAC, not his MP3s. So
| he removed that and got some different CD burning software
| that did support his MP3s, but was set to Finnish by default.
| He got enough Finnish translated to get it changed to
| English, and then ran into some sort of driver/support issue
| for his particular CD burner.
|
| At that point, he did the free upgrade to Windows 10 and then
| burned his CD in less total time than he'd spent not burning
| a CD via Mint.
| vel0city wrote:
| It has been a while for me since I last ran Mint, but back
| in the day it used to come with Brasero which can burn
| audio CDs. It would have supported mp3's, but he would of
| had to install the non-free codecs which was an option at
| install time or would have been installable from the
| settings.
|
| https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Brasero
|
| https://linuxmint-installation-
| guide.readthedocs.io/en/lates...
| stalfosknight wrote:
| And this is why the "Year of the Linux Desktop" will never
| come.
| olddustytrail wrote:
| Because of quite possibly the dumbest anecdote I've ever
| heard? I'm not sure morons anonymous has much influence
| in the real world.
| nikanj wrote:
| Just buy a pro/enterprise version, they support the GPOs to
| block updates
| Joeri wrote:
| Windows pro managed through intune should give you that
| control, though it is a bit of an awkward path for a single
| user.
| jonathantf2 wrote:
| Not sure if this is because I run the Pro version but I've
| never ever ever once had Windows 10 or 11 reboot to install
| updates on it's own.
| Dwedit wrote:
| Windows Update Blocker works as a nuclear option to disable all
| updates.
| ailurooo wrote:
| The genuine answer is that you won't get this functionality
| unless you use windows enterprise. Which of course you can't
| purchase.. This functionality is locked to just the enterprise
| and will likely never change..
| TheSkyHasEyes wrote:
| Tiny11 is a thing but I've no experience with it.
| https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=tiny11
| londons_explore wrote:
| > can't purchase
|
| There are certain high seas where such things are plentiful.
| bruce343434 wrote:
| With all that risk and effort, seriously why not just use
| linux?
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| https://www.protondb.com/explore
|
| Because most of this list is not Native or Platinum.
|
| Games on Windows _just work_.
|
| Also, how well does VR work in Linux these days?
| kobalsky wrote:
| > Also, how well does VR work in Linux these days?
|
| this loaded question should be directed towards the
| developers.
|
| that any Windows game works on Linux at all, given
| Microsoft's record regarding interoperability, seems like
| a miracle.
|
| If I had to make an equally loaded question I'd say, what
| OS are they using to host their game servers?
| londons_explore wrote:
| Game servers are fairly frequently hosted on Windows,
| simply because the game server often shares a lot of code
| with the client (including libraries which may not be
| cross platform), and game developers are often most
| familiar with Windows.
| stOneskull wrote:
| i don't know anymore. i'm getting really annoyed by
| background processes interfering with my counter-strike
| ping. like microsoft is checking my mail or uploading
| some telemetry bs or something. i can't wait to get back
| on linux.
| hospitalJail wrote:
| This is equally as dangerous.
| windowspiracy wrote:
| Eh, not really. You can download a windows pro ISO
| straight from microsoft [0], install it, and then upgrade
| it to enterprise using the kms client key [1]. That can
| then be activated using an open source kms server
| emulator [2] that has a reasonable amount of code you can
| audit if you're extremely paranoid.
|
| If you don't want to go through the hassle of installing
| and then upgrading I'm also pretty sure you can upgrade
| one of the images in the wim offline using dism.
|
| 0: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-
| download/windows10 (will serve you an iso directly
| instead of the media creation tool if you give it a linux
| user agent)
|
| 1: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/get-
| started...
|
| 2: https://github.com/Wind4/vlmcsd/tree/master
| hospitalJail wrote:
| Interesting.
|
| I do work on my windows machine, so doing anything
| illegal just gives me the opportunity to lose 1000x more
| money than if I just upgraded legally.
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >The genuine answer is that you won't get this functionality
| unless you use windows enterprise. Which of course you can't
| purchase.. This functionality is locked to just the
| enterprise and will likely never change..
|
| Of course you can purchase "enterprise" versions of Windows
| 11[0].
|
| What's more, _anyone_ can purchase most of Microsoft 's
| offerings for ~USD$1000[1].
|
| [0] https://www.microsoft.com/en-
| us/d/windows-11-pro/dg7gmgf0d8h...
|
| [1] https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/vs/pricing-details/
| incomplete wrote:
| why no https on this site?
| Eric_WVGG wrote:
| > This website requires a minimum of Internet Explorer 5.0 or
| above, but we recommend Internet Explorer 5.5.
|
| that's the bit that left me gobsmacked
| wvenable wrote:
| Does modern HTTPS even work on Windows 95?
| anthk wrote:
| Under Retrozilla, TLS 1.3
| samtheprogram wrote:
| Older web browsers like those on Windows XP don't support newer
| versions of SSL.
| Dwedit wrote:
| There are newer web browsers that will run on Windows XP, see
| New Moon http://matejhorvat.si/en/unfiled/pmxp/index.htm
|
| Even the final official build of Firefox that supported
| Windows XP will break on websites like Github, where a
| Releases page will never finish loading, and never let you
| download any files. But the New Moon build on that website
| (28.10) will work.
|
| (Don't forget to install uBlock Origin and a current fork of
| uMatrix)
| ogurechny wrote:
| See http://rtfreesoft.blogspot.com/ and
| https://github.com/Feodor2/Mypal68
|
| Discussions of those builds can be found in relevant
| threads on relevant forums.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| Last time I tried to tinker with Windows XP few years ago: you
| couldn't just update it after installation, but if you let it
| work for a few days, eventually it'd download and install updates
| automatically. And after those updates are installed, you can
| actually use Windows Update UI to install optional updates and
| other things.
|
| It definitely was after 2011.
| FredPret wrote:
| Windows Update did a better job over the years selling me on the
| Mac platform than Apple ever could
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| The sad thing is that IMO, Windows users brought the shitty
| Windows Update implementation on themselves.
|
| It was common in the Windows XP days for many users to _never_
| install updates and it really contributed to Windows 's
| reputation for being incredibly insecure. Forcing updates
| became the only option to ensure Windows users remain secure.
| metaltyphoon wrote:
| Funny enough, windows updates are infinitely better than macOS
| updates, which takes 30-60 mins each time.
| laserdancepony wrote:
| I still don't know why both are so slow. Upgrading my mostly
| vanilla Devuan boxes costs me a few seconds to minutes and
| restarts are only to switch kernels.
| jshier wrote:
| They're getting faster in Ventura. Moving to the sealed
| system volume in macOS 11 made them huge and slow to apply,
| but they're getting better. On my M1 Ultra machine even large
| updates don't take more than 5 or 10 minutes in the restart
| stage, and that can include firmware updates for the Mac and
| monitor (Apple Studio Display). And now with the rapid
| security patches there are some updates you don't even have
| to restart to apply (mostly).
| FredPret wrote:
| But they don't pop up a million times and then restart your
| system for you while you have a long compute job running
| overnight...
| hospitalJail wrote:
| This was one of many gripes when I went from Android to
| iPhone. Holy crap, every day there was some necessary update
| and I had to sign into my apple ID + be plugged in at 2am or
| something.
|
| Every time I unlocked that phone it would bother me.
|
| That, a slower response time(might have been due to
| animations), not having widgets, and some buggy official apps
| like the podcast app, and I bailed from iPhone pretty quick.
|
| I admittedly was so excited to unbox and give Apple all my
| personal information. Weird.
| delfinom wrote:
| Yea I own a iPhone for giggles and use a Pixel daily. HOLY
| CRAP, the update experience is so ridiculously slow on
| iPhones, I really don't Apple could not even try it fix it.
| How are iPhones not capable of having A/B partitions for
| the system to handle updates behind the scenes faster?
| kdklol wrote:
| This is exactly what I was looking for. Thanks.
|
| (Sent from a ThinkPad x41 running Windows XP)
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| My most recent use-case for XP (in VMs) is to deploy IE as a
| remote app, to access old DVRs that require ActiveX for web view.
| ck2 wrote:
| I saw an ATM reboot into XP kiosk mode the other week.
|
| Struck me as a bit unsafe?
|
| BTW this also exists or did exist for "Fix Windows Update on
| Windows XP, Vista, Server 2008, 2003, and 2000"
|
| https://github.com/kirb/LegacyUpdate
| giobox wrote:
| It was pretty crazy how long IBM's OS/2 survived as an OS on
| tons of ATMs throughout the world, there will probably still be
| an ATM somewhere running XP in the 2050s.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > Struck me as a bit unsafe?
|
| Usually ATMs run in their completely own network with heavy
| access controls limiting access even if the physical location
| is compromised.
| fredoralive wrote:
| It's not the greatest to be still using XP. Although hopefully
| an ATM would be on a real private network, or at least a VPN
| provided by some more up to date external box (though the
| latter could have its own bugs I guess). If you pair that with
| the fact you don't have externally accessible general IO[1]
| there probably isn't much opportunity to gain access.
|
| [1] If you can get into the innards you can probably just, you
| know, grab the cash (beware of dye bombs though).
| jaclaz wrote:
| >I saw an ATM reboot into XP kiosk mode the other week.
|
| JFYI, there is a dedicated thread on MSFN.ORG for these
| sightings:
|
| https://msfn.org/board/topic/176692-windows-xp-spotter-the-c...
|
| Atm's and public signage (airports, metro and similar) are
| still common enough.
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| Safer than card skimmers though.
| londons_explore wrote:
| DOS is easy to emulate - and dosbox does a great job of it, even
| in a web browser.
|
| Windows 3.1, 95, 98, Me are less easy to emulate.
|
| Note that that seems to have impacted the preservation of old
| games and programs. Plenty of dos games are all over the web and
| still quite popular, yet most stuff from the Win 9x era has
| almost entirely vanished due to the difficulty of running it on
| modern hardware.
|
| Archivists take note - if you want something to live for a long
| time, it needs to be easy to emulate. And in turn, that means it
| needs to be both very common, and have simple API's so someone in
| the future can be bothered to make and maintain an emulator.
| neckro23 wrote:
| > most stuff from the Win 9x era has almost entirely vanished
| due to the difficulty of running it on modern hardware.
|
| The tricky part is that this applies even if you're using a VM.
| I learned the hard way that Windows 98 isn't compatible with
| Ryzen CPUs, even through VirtualBox. I had to try again on
| another PC with an older Intel CPU.
| accrual wrote:
| A patch is available [0] to allow Windows 98 to be
| virtualized on more modern CPUs including Ryzen CPUs. It
| patches the "TLB Invalidation Bug". [1]
|
| [0] https://github.com/JHRobotics/patcher9x
|
| [1] https://blog.stuffedcow.net/2015/08/win9x-tlb-
| invalidation-b...
| gattilorenz wrote:
| For early-ish windows 98 era machines, 86Box is a very good
| option.
| TillE wrote:
| I wanted to play certain games from that era (Spiderweb's Exile
| series), and the best solution I found was to just play the
| MacOS versions with SheepShaver.
|
| You can technically get Windows 9x software running in a VM,
| but not without laggy video/audio in my experience.
| ogurechny wrote:
| DOS may be easy to emulate and re-implement because it's a
| single task operating system that does not do much. Most of
| hardware is accessed directly, and needs to be emulated
| instead. We enjoy great compatibility because of the enormous
| leap in performance since then (the slower the system the
| easier it is to simulate correctly on a modern one), and the
| combined knowledge of all the ins and outs collected during the
| PC boom by software authors and hardware makers implementing
| and re-implementing compatible devices.
| mminer237 wrote:
| I've had great success running Win 95 games on modern hardware.
| I just had to do it in Wine, amusingly enough.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Frustratingly, wine for windows isn't a thing...
| sedatk wrote:
| > Archivists take note - if you want something to live for a
| long time, it needs to be easy to emulate
|
| how do archivists have a say in this?
| londons_explore wrote:
| Some archivists make decisions about what to archive.
| Something that isn't going to be runnable in the future would
| be a poor choice if you only have limited resources.
|
| Also, some archivists have the choice to convert media. For
| example, rather than storing a Wordperfect document, perhaps
| it is best to convert to PDF. Rather than storing the ROM of
| an 80's arcade machine, or the whole machine, perhaps it is
| best to store an MPEG video of a playthrough. Rather than
| storing the data on a floppy disk in a filing cabinet,
| perhaps it is best to store the data on a server which will
| be kept up to date? Well resourced archives might be able to
| implement emulators - but then the question remains how
| should that be done - Is it okay to have a PDP11 emulator
| that runs on dos, emulated by dosbox in windows XP, emulated
| again by virtualbox on Windows 11?
|
| A big part of being an archivist is making decisions of what
| to keep, what not to keep, what form to keep it in, and when
| to convert it.
|
| There is no consensus - some archives knowingly keep data and
| software that they have no way to open/run, in the hope
| someone might bother in the future. Others keep dependency
| tables to ensure that they always have some combination of
| hardware and software to run/open any stored material.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Personally I'm of the opinion that we should focus on
| storing as many bytes of data of human endeavors as
| possible, and not worry about emulation/search/cataloging.
|
| Future people will have better solutions to all these
| problems, and every bit of effort we put into organising
| our archives today is effort taken away from collecting
| more bytes.
| ogurechny wrote:
| This means that you care about byte counter instead of
| actual content.
|
| For some hardware, the number of people who can make it
| work has already diminished a lot. You can gather some of
| the knowledge today, "future people" won't be able to.
| What's the use of collections of data that can't be used?
| jxramos wrote:
| I have to say this is awesome
|
| > This website requires a minimum of Internet Explorer 5.0 or
| above, but we recommend Internet Explorer 5.5. To download
| Internet Explorer 5.5, Click Here
| m000 wrote:
| How about adding some instructions on how to use it? Just
| saying...
| capableweb wrote:
| > To find out more about the Windows Update Website and what it
| does, Click Here
|
| >
| http://windowsupdaterestored.com/en/aboutwindowsupdaterestor...
|
| The submission is the literal website used for the updates. You
| use it by browsing the website like any other website.
|
| You figured out how to use HN without much hand-holding, I'm
| sure you can figure out how to use this website as well :)
|
| Edit: There is even a video explaining how to use the website,
| not sure what more you could ask for?
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbWa_tlC-3I
| mcpackieh wrote:
| Huh, I never realized that 95/98/ME ever had online updates in
| the first place.
| mattl wrote:
| Me neither.
|
| Wikipedia:
|
| > Windows Update was introduced as a web app with the launch of
| Windows 98 and offered additional desktop themes, games, device
| driver updates, and optional components such as NetMeeting.
| Windows 95 and Windows NT 4.0 were retroactively given the
| ability to access the Windows Update website and download
| updates designed for those operating systems, starting with the
| release of Internet Explorer 4.
| kotaKat wrote:
| It all started in Windows 98 with the launch of Windows Update;
| they then released the Critical Update Notification Tool (later
| renamed to Utility, for obvious reasons) which would query the
| website and just tell you when a critical update was available
| to go check the site.
|
| Otherwise, in the 95 era, I believe you'd likely be finding out
| through a software vendor or otherwise that a certain fixpack
| from Microsoft might fix an issue and you should go grab an
| update then.
| xattt wrote:
| Um... what? You would trigger online updates in Windows 95
| OSR 2 by using IE and navigating to the Windows Update
| website. This would then would trigger the updater.
| code_duck wrote:
| This is supported by the wikipedia page for Windows Update:
|
| "Critical Update Notification Utility (initially Critical
| Update Notification Tool) is a background process that
| checks the Windows Update web site on a regular schedule
| for new updates that have been marked as "Critical". It was
| released shortly after Windows 98."
|
| Unfortunately, the citation for that is no longer active on
| MS's site, and the archive.org version no longer works
| either.
| xenadu02 wrote:
| That was all after the fact. For its initial release and
| even much of OSR 2 the only updates you got came with a new
| computer via the OEM updates of which OSR 2 was the big
| one. If you were lucky you might see a Service Pack on CD
| though that was more of an NT/2000 thing.
| kotaKat wrote:
| Yeah -- OSR 1 (95 A), 2/2.1 (95 B), and 2.5 (95 C) were
| just that - OEM Service Releases.
|
| Anything else would have been a direct fix package - such
| as the _DCOM95 OLE Update_ , _DUN 1.4_ , or _Winsock 2_
| -- things that you only installed if you needed something
| that used those functions, and often would become bundled
| with the software anyways because users might not have
| been given those updates out of the box.
|
| There was at least _one_ XP-era update CD that I do
| recall - the _Windows Security Update 2004_ contained
| patches for 98 through XP and was available by mail from
| Microsoft.
|
| http://vogonsdrivers.com/getfile.php?fileid=873&menustate
| =
| coldpie wrote:
| > they then released the Critical Update Notification Tool
| (later renamed to Utility, for obvious reasons)
|
| Oofda. That can't have been an accident.
| n6h6 wrote:
| I thought you were joking, but no, the CUNT is real
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Update#Critical_Upda.
| ..
| coldpie wrote:
| I guess now we know why Windows patches will see you next
| Tuesday.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patch_Tuesday
| ogurechny wrote:
| -- Software could not expect internet connection (or any
| network at all) to be available, and would be considered really
| arrogant if it tried to dial or spend user's traffic by
| default.
|
| -- Those who knew how to enable those features probably checked
| update sites and news sites manually often enough.
|
| -- Almost all software had to bundle required components and
| updates anyway. Games came with DirectX version 5/6/7/8/9
| installers, IE version 4/5/6 installers provided important
| system components, acting as semi-service-packs for 9x
| systems... and, of course, Visual Studio library dependencies.
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