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Hi @Dave-H ; the d3ward test, hosted on GitHub, requires browser APIs that Firefox ESR 52.9.1 simply lacks, because it has been left to rot after its EOL in Sept 2018 (two and a half years already ) ; I won't even touch the security aspects of still using it, but the web itself has evolved greatly since then, usually for the worse, mostly according to what is being dictated by Google Chrome devs (which has been the topic of another recent post of mine...). After Microsoft acquired GitHub, one of the first things they did was to fire the old GH devs, who were more "willing" to keep GH backwards-compatible with non-Chromium/older browser engines; the M$ team that stepped in soon abandoned support for older browsers and quickly introduced "new" web technologies (read Chrome-isms), since their new and shiny toy browser, ChrEdge/Win7+, uses now the Chromium engine... One of these APIs is the AbortAPI (aka abortController) and it is now required for that adblock test to work successfully... I loaded the test URI in my portable copy of FxESR 52: and the error is generated because of //Function to check an url and set red/green result async function check_url(url, div, parent, np) { // Lets set up our `AbortController`, and create a request options object // that includes the controller's `signal` to pass to `fetch`. const controller = new AbortController() const config = { ...{ method: 'HEAD', mode: 'no-cors' }, signal: controller.signal } failing... OTOH, UXP-based browsers after October 2020 do have support for abortController API, hence the test loads and completes successfully there... I know you are very much entitled to your choice of FxESR 52 as your "main" browser in your XP-partition, but perhaps you should seriously consider migrating to latest Serpent 52.9.0 (it isn't such a huge leap from FxESR 52, but it is a maintained application with considerably better response to "current" web than the now deprecated browser it was forked off... ) . Just my 2p, of course ... Cheers

@Sampei.Nihira : In latest Serpent 52, I only use uBlock Origin 1.16.4.28 ; when I first ran the test, I got a score of 84% ; enabling the built-in AdGuard Tracking Protection filter list, it goes up to 90%; however, tracking down which hostnames were allowed in the tool's results, and creating global "block" rules in uBO: * analytics.facebook.com * block * analytics.pointdrive.linkedin.com * block * widgets.pinterest.com * block * analytics.pinterest.com * block * trk.pinterest.com * block * appmetrica.yandex.com * block * yandexadexchange.net * block * analytics.mobile.yandex.net * block * extmaps-api.yandex.net * block * adsdk.yandex.ru * block * data.mistat.xiaomi.com * block * data.mistat.intl.xiaomi.com * block * data.mistat.india.xiaomi.com * block * data.mistat.rus.xiaomi.com * block * logservice.hicloud.com * block * logservice1.hicloud.com * block * logbak.hicloud.com * block * insights.samsung.com * block * analytics-api.samsunghealthcn.com * block * supportmetrics.apple.com * block * metrics.icloud.com * block * metrics.mzstatic.com * block ... I can get 100% : (... without enabling AdGuard Tracking Protection list, which is quite a big one... ) . FWIW, another tester tool can be tried on: https://adblock-tester.com/ Happy blocking everyone...

I never bothered with Min/MaxFileCache. PATCHMEM and ConservativeSwapfileUsage=1 is enough, regardless of how much RAM you have.

Microsoft does not fix bugs unless it is forcasted to have an impact to their bottom line. It doesn't matter if it is related to a currently supported product or not. I have submitted bug reports including PoC for current MS Office and with the ADK and they do nothing about it, not even acknowledge it. The typical reaction goes something like this: If I do a specific thing, I get an error. How should I fix it? Let me ask you a bunch of irrelevant questions ... (a lot of back and forth) I found what makes the error. Here are the commands I run, what happens, the logs and traces, and how to fix it = Sometimes it comes down to who you talk to. If the person you are interacting with is a support person and not a tech or engineer, then they may see a "resolution" of using a workaround and never pass it up. Once they think they have "solved" the issue, it is over. Nothing is ever done, not even make a KB or a post about it.

Your question reveals that you have a small learning-curve ahead. But since you already know that you can "inspect element and modify", the learning curve should be small. "Inspect element and modify" would work - but you would have to "inspect element and modify" EVERY time that you visit Google Drive. You will need to install an add-on in your NM27. The add-on is called "Stylem" and can be obtained from here -- https://addons.palemoon.org/addon/stylem/ You then create a User Style for Google Drive using the CSS that @RainyShadow provided.

These are the last versions that work http://i430vx.net/files/XP/EOL/VC1719_redist.XPx64.exe http://i430vx.net/files/XP/EOL/VC1719_redist.XPx86.exe

I modded the XP drivers for haswell IGPU to work on vista. aero doesn't work but there is probably a bypass available to force it on. i have only tested on Intel HD 4600 but should work on other haswell based gpu download: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LVRpJRQd3kn9Jotb6I638vdPjysk30Vn/view?usp=sharing for 64bit vista (XP compatibility should be broken now.) EDIT: I should mention there is no setup, You have to use Device Manager to install it. EDIT 2: I also forgot to mention it should show up as "Intel Haswell Graphics GT2" or something similar. This is normal. EDIT 3: Supported CPU list below

I used to be on here back in the 2003-2004 timeframe and was basically DevOps building Windows XP, it became rather fun and I built a pipeline for all of our PCs at work (only about 200 systems). I was responsible for all aspects of IT at that point, except for our ERP system. It has been a rather long time since then and I finished my BS while working at that job and the next job. I have done tons of enterprise work since then and I work as a consultant doing Azure work, these days. I use Packer to create system images these days and want to get a little more serious with Chocolatey in order to streamline the software installation. EDIT: My desktop is Windows Server 2019 Datacenter. I have a couple of NVMe drives and 64GB of RAM and run Hyper-V for VMs.

"Update for Windows 7 for x64-based Systems (KB3125574) is not working at all." Sounds like good advertising to me.

Thanks, that explains the problem! This is off-topic, but I'm actually constantly surprised at just how well Firefox 52.9 ESR does still work, as you say it's now years old! It's had all the tweaks of course, which has improved its performance. It's still rather slow on javascript heavy sites like Facebook, but I'm impressed that it still works there at all! Even videos still seem to be no problem on YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram, despite a few scares in recent years. My only major reason not to switch to something else is really because I use Firefox Sync to synchronise my browsing data between Firefox on XP, Windows 10, and my mobile phone, and from what I can gather none of roytam1's browsers can now use the Mozilla Sync system, despite being originally Mozilla based. Eventually I will have to bite the bullet of course, but at the moment it's actually quite rare to find a site which is unusable in Firefox 52 ESR, and all the sites I use regularly are fine with it, so until that changes (which it inevitably will of course) I will stick with it. Cheers, Dave.

Neither could I. I guess the answer may be hidden in https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/wua_sdk/using-the-windows-update-agent-api , where I got the offline scanning example code. But I am not a real programmer, so trying to understand the whole structure and utilizing it is beyond my current ability and will. Hope others could look into this.

Very good notice: Market prices for Windows 98 computers are going up since some years! There is a scene now that restores Windows 98 computers and sells them for over 100 euros. Windows 98 did become an expensive oldtimer. Windows XP is close of being one, but currently it marks the low-price valley (the Pentium 4 single-core machines, to be precise). Now is the perfect time to get a proper Windows 98 machine from the scrap heap or for scrap prices online indeed!

Wow.. Wow.. Wow! Thank you so much @Sampei.Nihira - what a great way to start the day here First time I ran it: I got to 92%, so I added your list @VistaLover and reached 97%. I added the following that were still showing 'not blocked': freshmarketer.com cdn.luckyorange.com w1.luckyorange.com browser.sentry-cdn.com ads.facebook.com analytics.oneplus.cn click.oneplus.cn samsung-com.112.2o7.net And; BINGO! Wishing you both a great week ahead and stay healthy :)

@Dixel See if it says "following" at the top right of the thread. If it doesn't, turn following on and you should get a notification e-mail anytime anyone posts. If it wasn't on already, check your forum notification settings. You should be automatically subscribed to threads that you post in.

Thank-you Deomsh for the detailed explanation and links, you've put a lot of work into this stuff. The MaxFileCache rules of thumb are definitely variable. I've read that between Windows 95 -> 98SE there were several improvements - don't know for sure. Thankfully i'm under 512 MB RAM and the system runs stable, so will continue to leave [vcache] empty. Subjective, my other Windows 98 machine with 1.5 GB RAM doesn't run as smooth or stable as this 384 MB system, despite RLOEW's patch and tweaking attempts. In SYSTEM.INI [386Enh] this 384 MB system uses below, which doesn't need swap during regular use, seems okay. ConservativeSwapfileUsage=1 MinPagingFileSize=131072 MaxPagingFileSize=131072 Regarding CONFIG.SYS for DOS, thanks for confirming. My DOS applications run fine so will leave this alone too. Never even heard of MinSPs and PerVMFiles. Thank-you the informative MDGx link (SYSTEM.INI TWEAKS), bookmarked. Still so much to learn and explore. Regarding network speed, this system uses moderate speed DSL, tweaked via TCP Optimizer v3.0.8. A Windows XP system was recently set up (yes not Windows 98) and a popular network tweak utility was trialed, the name escapes me. Nonetheless the tweaks were negligible so i went back to TCP Optimizer and was painlessly able to get my usual connection speed. There are some nice sites like below for practical download speed testing of various file sizes, no JavaScript required. https://www.thinkbroadband.com/download One old system has a hard drive that is failing SMART forever. I refuse to give it up until it totally dies. It's noisy and on startup has the 'click of death' for years. It is sometimes unable to spin up after sleep, problematic during runtime requiring file system checks. The BIOS and OS has recently been configured to prevent hard drive sleep. As long as the drive powers up at boot, almost always, now it never needs to wake from sleep during a session. A little more electricity but the system runs reliably. Will limp it along, no important data on the drive, have backup images of the OS'. My Windows 98 registry is occasionally backed up to another hard drive on this dual boot system (two retro 6 GB hard drives). For anyone using dual boot Windows 98 and GNU/Linux, a command like 'cp -aux /mnt/sda1/WINDOWS/SYSBCKUP/rb*.cab /destination_directory' will preserve the date stamps of the backed up files. This makes it easy to determine the backup date if it becomes necessary to restore an older registry. As mentioned previously, a similar copy command can backup an entire Windows 98 install to other media or GNU/Linux partition, no fancy backup software needed. Just a call out to any Windows 9x Geezers and wannabes, now is the time! If you've been daydreaming about this stuff for the last 20 years, no guarantee this goodness will still be waiting for you another 20 years down the road, just saying..

https://aka.ms/framework-sha1-retirement

Welcome to the MSFN forums, @FalcoFantastic Let me first say I find it highly praise-worthy that you are willing to accommodate users of the arduino forums that happen, for various reasons, to be stuck on older hardware/OS that would warrant the use of "niche" browsers like New Moon 27 (NM27) ... I think it should be first prudent to familiarise you with what exactly NM27 is... NM27 is an unbranded unofficial fork of version 27 of the Pale Moon browser, originally developed by Moonchild Productions; v27 of PM is no longer maintained by "upstream", they are already at v29 of Pale Moon... NM27 is modified to run on at least Windows XP SP3 (original PM27 required at least Vista SP2), it is now being "updated" with code from another upstream project by ArcticFox/rmottola, which tries to "equip" it with features from higher ( > 38 ) Firefox versions... NM27 is built on a platform originally called Tycho (name given by MCP), itself a fork of Mozilla 38esr (heavily modified along the way...) ; it is being compiled in three flavours, two of which (sse-only/ia32-only) are very popular with members here on old CPUs incapable of SSE2 instruction set ... So, @Vistapocalypse is right when saying that NM27 should be at least on par with Fx38; in fact, I loaded your test URI in Fx38.8.0esr and got the exact same console errors as in NM27: For my test in NM27 trying to load the new format of the arduino forum, please see this . Kindest regards

Welcome back to MSFN. Wow ... it sounds like you've come a long way since you last participated here - congratulations on all your success! Things and life have certainly changed since 03/04 ... seems like a lifetimes ago, yet at the same time, like just yesterday. See ya around the forums

Generally speaking, I think Windows 8.1 will be treated like Vista when it comes to Supported Software. To be fair, the following companies should have separated XP‘s EOL from Vista‘s EOL: Google: Chrome support ended 2 years after XP’s EOL in 2016 with v49. If they would have done the same 2 year hiatus after Vista‘s EOL, we would probably have Chrome up to v73/74. Mozilla: Firefox XP users functionality updates nearly 3 years after EOL. Imagine, Vista‘s EOL was in 2017 and additional 3 years would mean that users could have possibly be at Firefox v68 ESR/78ESR Microsoft: To be really honest with you guys, Microsoft did the most sh*t, when it comes to Software Compatibility with Vista. 1. It literally came with WMP 11 and stayed with it until EOL, although 12 was pre-released, 2 YEARS after Vista‘s release. XP on the other hand, came with WMP 6 (?) and got all the way up to WMP 11?? 2. Microsoft Live Essentials 2012 was a heavy improvement over 2011 and I‘m sure that Vista could have ran that software easily 3. Internet Explorer 9 is the biggest cra* browser that is still updated nowadays. Please never tell me that this browser is good. I was mad that MS stopped producing IE and replaced it with Edge. That‘s so confusing in Windows 10 with two browsers but anyways.. IE9 was released in early 2011, when Vista was 3 years old. However, Vista‘s Mainstream Support ended in 2012, which means that never IE versions could have definitely be ported to it as well. If they would have released new IE versions annually, XP should gave gotten IE9/10 and Vista 11+. Why I am so mad? Because when we speak of Vista, we also mean Server 2008 SP2. An operating system, which is used in bigger companies and businesses. What‘s the point of updating IE9 for sooooo long, if businesses cant do anything, not even check E-Mails anymore? Server 2008 is my biggest argument for these unjustified EOL‘s. My father‘s company still relies on that OS with ESU on it now, but everytime I see Vista/Server 2008, a bitter irony floats through me: the only still secure browser is Internet Explorer 9 and it‘s basically useless. Anything that scores below 300 HTML5 points cant be used properly to browse the web anymore

I think we have to dig on the word "telemetry" here. Windows XP independent network activity wasn't called telemetry back then (at least from what I can tell here as a non-native speaker). Still, Windows XP is a chatty system in its standard settings. I don't measure this by today's (wasteful) standards for phoning home, it's a principle instead, that nothing should run except the stuff I was asking for. You basically have to deactivate 80% of the Windows services (under msconfig). I think Windows Update is the worst one. The NTP time program syncronises the system clock with a server from the internet, but do you really know it doesn't send any other data of your computer over the network? I don't know, but I don't care either. Everything has to blocked, that I didn't ask for (that's my stubborn opinion of course)! Therefore some entries to the dnsmasq.conf file of my OpenWRT router: address=/microsoft.com/0.0.0.0 address=/*.microsoft.com/0.0.0.0 address=/a-msedge.net/0.0.0.0 address=/msftncsi.com/0.0.0.0 address=/windowsmedia.com/0.0.0.0 address=/windows.com/0.0.0.0 Blocking some Akamai servers was also necessary if I recall correctly. Might be a bit bulldozer-style, but at least my Windows XP systems do what I tell them to do! Attention: The Hosts file doesn't work to block Microsoft servers on Windows XP! It did on Windows 98, but they've put holes in it to still let the Microsoft servers pass through. The exact entries can be found in the system file "dnsapi.dll". You can throw it into your Notepad, press Ctrl+F and search for "microsoft.com". More filtered domains are about to appear... Anyways, it's very likely that there was always "telemetry" in Windows XP. Too much suspicious network activity. Remember, it had to start somewhere to get where current Windows systems are now!

Step by step instructions on how to remove Alexa. But like they said : "This process is difficult", esp. for beginners , it is better to remove it before , like I suggested. https://www.safer-networking.com/removealexa.php To remove Dr.Watson watch this video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfaohidTEKs

One of the most notorious spies included in WIndows XP , that the previous poster didn't mention, are : 1 - Dr. Watson. It is running and if any Windows application crashes, Dr. Watson creates a report , guess what next. Usually prepared reports go here : C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Microsoft\Dr Watson More regarding this subject : https://hotcomm.com/FAQ/FAQ_drwatson.asp 2 - Alexa - it spies and reports all about the websites you visit . Both can be removed with nLite and/or similar tools. Or just insert this section to your nLite preset during the preparition of the setup. This is only for removing Alexa , 'cause some may still want to use Dr. Watson for debugging. The first three lines are for your own choosing . [Tweaks] Privacy-Disable Driver Update Internet prompt Privacy-Disable File MRU-List Privacy-Disable Tracking of most used programs Privacy-Remove Alexa