Yellow Horror

I talk about "Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack" (aka "FileFormatConverters"), a tool that allow Office XP and Office 2003 to operate new MS Office file formats (like .docx .xlsx and so on). It has some relation with Office 2007 but it isn't a part of the O'2007. It has its own updates, including "Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack Service Pack 3". KB4011064 and KB3213647 are two of such updates.

I isolate troublesome Office compatibility pack updates today: KB4011064 KB3213647 If both of them are installed, the WUA takes less than five minutes to build a correct list of missing updates. If either one is missing, it locks one CPU core for hours without positive result. I use Russian version of MS Office for testing, but i don't think that the language matters. I think, i know what the problem is. These updates have long lists of updates they replaced (and IE cumulative update too!) It is known that original WUA has a very ineffective "tracking of replacements" routine. The Windows 7 users are first who fail into this trap of "forever update searching" some time ago. The bug was then fixed in later 7 updates, but newly installed system still has this trouble and often can't finish the first search for updates (the irony is that buggy original WUA can't find update to fix itself), so need updating WUA manually. Now it is our, XP users, turn to suffer. Hope we receive WUA fix also.

No, it's not Firefox-related. I checked and has the same bug on Chrome 49. The new page in the same window don't load until pressing "refresh" button in any of this two browsers.

Didn't you see another Makoto Shinkai works? They all are very emotional and masterpiece animations. But the stories, including this one, are a little shallow, for my taste.

As far as i can remember, in XP you can upgrade "Windows update" to "Microsoft update" with Internet Explorer.

Don't forget to check, if you really can restore your important data from the backup. "Non-working backup" is a second common data-related disaster (after "a drive failure").

"XP and its 6.47% of users and it will for sure decrease..." As long as a browser, or any other piece of software, works correctly for me, its marketing share don't bother me at all.

Chromium is a bad choice to prolong XP usability because it don't have builtin support for ECC certificates. Many websites use ECC certificates already and the number of them will grow in the near future. I suggest you to concentrate your efforts on Firefox or another opensource browser (if there is any) with builtin ECC support.

That's a wrong question. The right question is: what good is all the extra task and processes that the end user don't need, but have to support them with extra hardware purchases, spending extra electric power and extra Internet traffic? You forgot to add "in my impression". I can say, from my point of view, that any NT-based system is quite stable, if there is no hardware or driver problems, and no malicious software installed. It is normal for XP to have a month of uptime (from one updates-related reboot to another) or even more without any troubles. It is normal for 7, 8 or 10 also.

Windows Vista (and later versions) buildin firewall is good enough (and supports stealth mode). The only thing that is need to use it effectively is a better control tool than the native Windows "control panel". Try Windows Firewall Control, it is very lightweight and free. You need version 4.9.6.0 or older because Vista support is dropped since 4.9.7.0.

Oh, you just reminded me how tricky it was to create an MB aligned bootable software mirror volume for XP on AHCI SATA controller. Hope i never have to do this quest again...

And, as i read in this discussion before, the trick don't work under XP. And the symptoms suggested that there is a bit capacity limitation somewhere in the XP MBR-to-LBA translating routine. There may be a workaround in patching some XP files, integrating WS03 or 7 files into XP, or develop a replacement routine from scratch. But, IMHO, all this don't worth the efforts (first two solutions are against MS license though). In any case you can't utilise over than 4 Tb drive this way, so comparing with working GPT implementation for XP (Paragon or any alternative) it seems a palliative. What interested me is: 1. If Paragon GPT loader is compatible with MS "dynamic" drives? 2. If it is compatible with Windows software RAID 5 support (that is disabled in XP by default) precisely? Quick search give me some clues that the answer is probably "no". It is sad, but may be i am wrong? Can you check if a GPT drive (with Paragon GPTL installed of course) may be converted to "dynamic" under XP?

Sorry, but i miss the point of, what is the practical purpose of this tread? 1. The XP supports over 2 Tb volumes very well. I have an XP installation patched to support software Raid 5 and a volume of three 2 Tb HDDs, so about 4 Tb volume. It works like a charm, no problem. 2. There is a way to utilise over 2 Tb drives under XP - the Paragon GPT loader (and some other proprietary solutions from HDD manufacturers). The only thing that may be better here, if someone release a free GPT driver for XP. 3. There is no practically need in booting XP from an over 2 Tb drive. You always can add a bootable SSD drive to any system, including laptops. One of the main benefits of XP is that it isn't as bloated as 7 or 10, so a very small (and cheap) SSD will be enough to install it. I see no benefit in developing EMBR if it can't be a widely supported technical standard.

Is the NDP40-KB3097994-x86.exe update still necessary? I just remove and reinstall .NET Framework 4 and the WU don't ask for KB3097994 nor KB2979575 that was replaced by it in the past. The same question for NDP40-KB3037578-x86.exe. WU don't ask for it. And KB2901110 is removed from the WU list after the NDP40-KB3098778-x86.exe installation. P. S. It seems that all files from KB3037578 are superseded by later updates. But KB3097994 files are more recent than the files in my system after install all updates requested by WU. So i install it also. P. P. S. It seems that all files from NDP40-KB2938780-x86.exe are superseded also. So the only thing it really does is to add a registry key (which can be added manually):

Yes, i do not uninstall anything, just install KB2973115 "again" from standalone installer, and that solves the trouble with KB2756918.

MS Baseline Security Analyser v.2.1 works well with the "hack". It recognizes missing POS-ready updates and allow to download most of them as standalone installers. I do not try later versions of MSBSA because the download option is removed from these.

After installing ndp30sp2-kb3188734-x86 i experience the trouble with WU continuously presenting ndp30sp2-kb2756918-x86 to install. Reinstalling ndp30sp2-kb2973115-x86 (that replace ndp30sp2-kb2756918-x86 due to catalog.update.microsoft.com) fix it to me. Hope that info will be useful for anyone else.

It is Avast-related issue. I suspect that Avast executable-checking routine interferes with MS updates self-checking routine. In many cases it is enough to run the update executable once more, but some updates (probably the biggest ones like IE cumulative updates) fail to install constantly until the Avast filesystem protection is suspended. I report the trouble to Avast tech support some time ago, never get any answer.