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Microsoft are slowly and steadily making the decisions NOT to upgrade to Win 10 on one's hardware more and more difficult to live with... What do I mean? I finally got to a point where I could test the latest Windows Updates on my Win 8.1 workstation. This is a top-end Dell machine that runs stably, facilitating my software and business management work, for months on end. TLDR: I experienced a REAL 8% drop in performance to bring it up to the current patch level, vs. keeping it at last December's patch level. This is EXACTLY what I experienced with Windows 7 on another machine as well. And these measurements, taken by looking at the overall times the machines take to get through some big regularly scheduled jobs, such as software builds or backups, are with the Spectre and Meltdown mitigations turned off! The performance impact is MUCH WORSE with the mitigations enabled, which is the default. Something like 30% worse. I'm considering backing out these updates from my Win 8.1 system. The difference in price at the level I'm doing computing to get 8% more performance is not insignificant! Hardly anyone is talking about this... Are we all SO willing to see our machines run into the ground just to feel "safer" from the unknown? All the while Windows 10 - you know, the one with the largest number of vulnerabilities uncovered each month - is touted as "the most secure Windows ever"? What price security? -Noel

The new experimental AG version released yesterday doesn't need any symbol files, at least until the next cumulative update for Windows 10. The huge memory leaks from the previous experimental build appear to be gone.

Don't you do your own backups? I have completely shunned the cloud and yet - amazingly - I haven't lost any data since 1976 (though I admit that some of it is on punch cards and mag tape, which I never transferred into the PC environment). As far as files on my computer go, my oldest Word document in my Documents folder is from 1990 (which is when I started using Word). Never once have these documents been "on the cloud". You cannot espouse advantages of "cloud" computing - which differs from traditional computing with networking in one key point, you don't have control of the communications - because there simply are no advantages for users. The only advantages are for those who would seek to profit from handling your data. Surely you don't believe in a free lunch. The oldest program in my BIN folder is dated 1986, which is when I started accumulating useful applications. It no longer runs on my host system since it's a 16 bit application. However, to this day I still run the NT CLOCK32.EXE application, which is dated late 90s, on my desktop 24/7. Why? Because it accomplishes its purpose (showing me the time and date) with almost no resource consumption. The executable is a whole 42 kBytes in size. My point? There is no reason to believe that "newer is better" when it comes to software. People aren't any smarter than they were decades ago. If anything, they lack the wisdom and prowess people had to develop when computing was more expensive and difficult, and they weren't distracted by their damned phones all the time. -Noel

Not at all. It's a sad day. Every time a technology that gives one a hardcopy of what one buys dies is a time some of our collective freedom is lost. You must understand one has a book or a CD/DVD with a .pdf, or with music, or whatever, one owns that... one has a text into kindle or a music in iTunes one got nothing, and it can be taken from one anytime with little or no explanation and no money back, because one had previously given them the right to do it, when buying that. Ever heard of the memory hole?

10TB is probably the largest Drive they could get their hands on to test. There is no reason for the limit to be less than 17TB and the actual limit is probably much larger.

@WinClient5270 You misunderstood, Wolfenstein: The Old Blood works great without any workarounds. But downloading it and running it on Vista machine could become the problem when Steam drops Vista support. On an unrelated note, I could play Wolfenstein: The New Order on Windows XP x64 some time ago. This game was compiled with an older compiler and id Software's engines were historically minimalistic in Windows API usage, though recent games use more functions. Those instructions are for unrelated commercial piece of software, Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi MB3. It does use InstallShield installer. If there's a known method for those like with Windows Installers (I'm personally not aware of it), it oughtta be easier than attaching a debugger and hunting for version check routines. I know some small pieces of the puzzle when it comes to programming for Windows, so I used that knowledge to get that particular installer to cooperate.

I buy from Japan, sometimes from Finland and, when available, from amazon.com... Even considering the importation taxes double the price (only books and printed matter in general are tax-free in Brazil), if they have what I want, I'm OK with it.

I checked my own system, and the mshtml.dll file from KB4230450 is installed there. (Fearing the typical long wait from MU, I had downloaded and installed KB4230450 directly from the Microsoft Update Catalog, and didn't rely on MU to find it.) Given its later date, it probably has some security fixes beyond KB4316682, since we know TLS 1.2 support is included in both updates. It seems KB4316682 is superseded by KB4230450. But if folks installed KB4316682 and relied on MU/WU/AU to find the latest updates, they would have missed KB4230450 due to the version number mix-up, so they should now download and install it manually from the catalog. It will probably all shake out next month anyway, when the next Cumulative IE8 Update or Security Update is released. The version numbers probably won't stay the same next time....

Another solution might be a bare drive along with this ezDISK HDD dock: https://www.amazon.com/ezDISK-EZ0330-docking-station-compatible/dp/B0755P3R4H It has a switch to select 512-byte or 4K-byte sector sizes with AF drives. For XP use, just set the switch to 4K, plug in a nice, big, bare drive, and partition and format it as desired. For some reason it claims a 10TB limit. Not sure what that's about (I'd think it would work up to 17TB, if you could find a bare drive that big).

This one worked out-of-the box at the time, still have the screenshot: I mentioned Sound Blaster X-Fi MB3 installer in that post, which refused to install. I didn't modify the executable itself because GetVersionEx function was called from a bunch of different places. The installer could be launched and the welcome page worked without any workarounds, at which point I ran OllyDbg (version 2.01) , selected File->Attach and picked the installer's process. After analysis is complete, right-click in the main pane, Select module->ntdll, press Ctrl + N and start typing RtlGetVersion, double-click on the highlighted entry and press F2 to set the breakpoint at the function. The installer can now be unpaused hitting F9 key, and clicking Next should eventually cause RtlGetVersion to be called (it's used internally by GetVersionEx, which is what applications normally call). Pressing F8 a few times will eventually move the current instruction pointer to a series of instructions that look like this: MOV EAX,DWORD PTR DS:[EDI+0A4] MOV DWORD PTR DS:[ESI+4],EAX MOV EAX,DWORD PTR DS:[EDI+0A8] MOV DWORD PTR DS:[ESI+8],EAX MOVZX EAX,WORD PTR DS:[EDI+0AC] MOV DWORD PTR DS:[ESI+0C],EAX MOV EAX,DWORD PTR DS:[EDI+0B0] MOV DWORD PTR DS:[ESI+10],EAX These fill the first 4 significant members (dwMajorVersion, dwMinorVersion, dwBuildNumber, dwPlatformId) of OSVERSIONEX structure pointed to by the pointer passed to GetVersionEx called by application. When MOV EAX,DWORD PTR DS:[EDI+0A4] is highlighted, you should see something like this in a pane below: [0033A0A4]=6 The part after the equal sign is important, it represents the value that will be copied to dwMajorVersion, the pointer on the left could be anything. Pressing F8 two more times highlights the next instruction that takes the value that will be copied to dwMinorVersion. On Vista, this is 0, so you double-click the entry and change it to 1, which is what happens on Windows 7, so your OS version now reads 6.1 instead of 6.0. Selecting Detach from the File menu then detaches debugger from installer and continues its execution. So this was rather specific example. Some programs may need to be launched from debugger to be able to catch version check. For 64-bit applications, you'd need to use a 64-bit debugger (x64dbg comes in both 32 and 64-bit flavors) and the instructions look a bit different, but the pattern in the RtlGetVersion function is practically the same. Other programs may employ anti-debugging tricks, so you'd probably need some plugin for the debugger to hide it. I never dealt with that kind. PS: Equalizer APO might work on Vista, but wasn't tested by developers.

I can't remember the last time I had bought a CD at a big retail store like that. Now there are no music stores around, it still hasn't led me to buying CDs at retail. That isn't to say I don't buy CDs, but basically I tend to not want to spend money for listening to music I can hear for free on the radio... basically retail stores only sell pop music.

Well, something in one of the updates did overwrite my patched uxTheme files, so I fetched those from a backup, just so my themes worked. I guess my .NET was all patched up, since the update did not apply. Otherwise, all is well in Vista-Land!

The experimental build was last updated on Jun 17, so is clearly still in active development. Many thanks to BigMuscle.

simple: microsoft can see when people are writing malware and do something against them :-P

New user account sort of fixed the problem. Most files could be moved, renamed, etc without issue but several were still giving me UAC prompts. Ended up doing a clean install and no more errors, but with my luck I'll probably encounter the issue again down the road :P

Well I've reviewed the updates as best I can and have gone through with the installation. I dunno, somehow I feel as if Microsoft isn't leveling with us on everything, you know? Oh well (I'll let you all know how it goes.)

Sorry for the delay. I am happy to report that the latest version of FileZilla works on Windows Vista SP2 + Platform Update & Supplement without any issues whatsoever: You get a little nag when launching the installer for the latest version of the software, but the developers were very generous and decided to allow installation on unsupported OSes anyway: @UCyborg, do you care to repost your findings on how to get Wolfenstein: The Old Blood working in Vista by modifying the game's executable? Your post got deleted when the servers crashed so I can't link it on my list anymore. SUMMARY OF CHANGES TO THE LIST FOR JUNE 17, 2018: Updated FileZilla entry to UNS status, as the software stopped supporting Vista as of version 3.25.2-rc1, however the latest versions continue to work in Vista. Added WPS Data Recovery Master to "System Management, Cleanup, and Analysis" section. Updated information about Steam support: the software will stop supporting Windows Vista on January 1, 2019. Click here to read more.

it is last ESR version works without SSE2.

vistax64.com

I totally agree, I'm just voicing my "freedom of speech" opinion. We have laws for a reason, otherwise there would be chaos. However, today we have many situations where there is no accountability (like Valve). This is exactly what's wrong with the world today. In the name of profit, anything goes, regardless of the consequences. Our entire political system revolves around money. Since this is off topic, this is all I will say on the matter!