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@mina7601Yes! It's an older relative of BBEdit (same developers), so I suppose one could find a Windows-based equivalent if they wanted (TextWrangler is only 32-bit apparently, so it won't run on new Macs anymore, so I think I'll look into upgrading to the latest BBEdit, which is fully 64-bit). c

I used a Mac program called TextWrangler, which is roughly equivalent to Notepad++. c

Indeed! Mr. P's actions are inexcusable and he must be stopped! OK. What I'm thinking is maybe I'll just send you the file I made, and from there you can do with it what you will. A text editor. I handwrote it in HTML 4 and very minor CSS, so it should be viewable using virtually any browser, and it should be fairly easy to maintain. c

Of course! It's a big problem, because one can't count on the Wayback Machine to completely archive anything (it's particularly hit or miss with forums). I will! And I guarantee that I will do my best to not (knowingly) use anything Russian. I neither condone nor support the unprovoked and indiscriminate killing and destruction of a nation and its citizens... Is DropBox OK with you? I understand. It was only an idea.... Of course! I don't want to make anything public without your permission and approval! And it's your right to do whatever you want with it. I only came up with the HTML version because I was bored and wanted something to do Of course! c

Much as I dislike Windows 10 and 11, I have to agree: most people don't care what OS their computer is running, as long as it lets them run whatever programs they want to run. How else does Microsoft get away with all the Telemetry, forced updates and other junk? Because most of their user base either doesn't know the difference or doesn't care! Either way, they just blindly accept whatever MS dishes out because newer is ALWAYS better! c

I don't like censorship, but I think it's warranted in MAT's case because of the extensive (and inappropriate) usage of expletives in his resignation thread. It says much about who he is (and isn't), and if he were "bleeped" like he would be in most other respectable, family-friendly forums (such as MSFN), he would end up saying virtually nothing! Kind of like those lousy reality shows where the "stars" speak in strings of expletives, so all the viewer hears is this long, unbroken tone, like a constant, unrelenting scream. Beyond that, about the only other thing I can say about him is that the degree of his apparent rage, hatred and disdain for virtually everyone leaves me speechless. Why do people like this exist? c

Ah, I forgot that like buttons are a thing! I just went back and "liked" the guide! I have updated my prototype using the newest version of your guide, so consider any old versions forgotten. Regarding "input", I basically just wanted to ask if it was OK that I did this, and to see if you had any thoughts on it. I copied all the links over, so everything is the same as it was, as far as linking to external sources goes (though, it could easily be modified such that all linked files and guides are local, but I left the links as is for now). As for where to put it, maybe it can be included in the all in one packs as a sort of instruction manual? c

@AstroSkipperGot all caught up now, so I can comment! I looked at your guide (it's about time someone made one!), and I like it so much, I was wondering if, with your permission, I could create an HTML version of it that could be mirrored somewhere as a backup in case MSFN ever become inaccessible? I noticed that it links to several other posts on here, so those would probably have to be recreated as well, but one thing at a time! That being said, I am almost finished with a basic prototype based on an old revision of your post. Let me know if you have any input! c

i totally agree. The degree of cruelty and hatred being displayed toward Ukraine, especially toward the poor citizens of Mariupol, is absolutely appalling and disgusting. It must be stopped somehow! By the way, does anyone know where in Ukraine feodor2 lives? And now back to the topic at hand: That MAT is quite a tyrant! Maybe now that he's gone, the Pale Moon team can actually stop being so hostile toward anyone who dares to use it on any OS other than what they dictate.... c

What a jerk he is! Good riddance!! Anyway, to echo the various messages here, I hope that @feodor2 is alive and safe while he helps save his country! Слава україні! c

I was in error earlier. Only one of the four updates has a 2k3 x64 version. I think I've reached a dead end maybe? c

Well, further checking says that 64-bit W2k3 compatible versions exist for 4019276, 4493435, 942288 and probably the Root Certificate Update, so hopefully that's enough? Otherwise, I guess we'll have to determine if the fix or fixes included in 4467770 are somehow recreate-able or re implement-able in a W2k3 x64-compatible form. Or maybe an otherwise incompatible update (from Vista x64, say) has something relevant that can be coerced into working on 2k3? In the meantime, I'm away from home at the moment, but when I get back, I'll try installing all the other updates as needed and see what happens... c

Well, if there are 64-bit versions available and they're not already installed, it probably won't hurt anything to try and see what happens.... EDIT: These updates had already been installed in my 32-bit XP VM, which probably explains why it worked. EDIT #2: The updates seem to be specific to POSReady 2009, so looks like I'm out of luck maybe? c

Fixed! Serves me right for doing it from memory! Now that I entered the proper settings, it seems to have fixed the infinite redirect! Now I'm getting error 0x80072f78. c

OK. Here's a couple detailing the Internet Settings (these same settings work fine on my 32-bit XP Pro VM): I hope these are useful. EDIT: This XP Pro x64 install is also running in a VM, if that matters.... c

@maile3241I did that. Unfortunately, no change. c

@xpandvistafanGood to know, thanks! I'm trying to get it to work on XP x64, and so far I seem to be unable to. Since it's generally identical to Server 2003 (which, although untested, should work), I figured it would work. Does it matter that the last time WU worked natively, I had been using Microsoft Update? It seems stuck in the redirect loop, and I'm not sure how to fixed it, unless there's a patched MU dll somewhere? c

I came across this page, which, last I checked, only had 20 or so pages (!), so it took some time to read through it all! Anyway, I pieced together the instructions, and got everything set up. It took a few tries, but after realizing the script failed to replace wuaueng.dll with the patched version, I did it myself manually (I found that to satisfy SFC, I had to replace it in three places: C:/Windows/System32, C:/Windows/System32/dllcache, and C:/Windows/ServicePackFiles/i386), and, well, I'll let these screenshots speak for themselves: I was so excited, I forgot to get a screenshot of the initial landing page, but the fact I got these two should nevertheless imply that I was quite successful! The install I'm using is a copy of Windows XP Professional that I installed in a virtual machine running on my Mac. I'm quite surprised that everything's still here and apparently functional, and only the means of accessing it from XP was blocked! I wonder how long it will last before MS decides to shut the site down altogether? Nevertheless, it just occurred to me that maybe it's still here because some well-paying corporte or governmental customers are contracting MS to produce special extended support updates, one or more of which may enable proper, native support for SHA-2/SHA256? It sure would be fun if somehow we could find out for certain! That being said, in the interest of preservation, I think this is a good opportunity for someone to consider analyzing the site and downloading every possible file, with an eye towards perhaps reverse engineering the backend and re implementing it on a local server. Or perhaps as some sort of runtime that can run in much the same way as ProxHTTPSProxy? c

I tried to log into my Yahoo account, and now apparently I can't unless I give them a phone number so they can send me an SMS message with a verification code. Given that there's nothing much to lose (they already know my number), I dutifully complied. The trouble is, I never got the message with the verification code! Therefore, I gave up. Again. I find myself longing for the good old days where almost everything was minimum security and we dialed in when we needed to log on and simply hung up when we were done. Always-on internet is fine and good, but it gets annoying real fast when computers and OSes are basically built such that they actually require an always-on connection, to do the same things that their 20 year old counterparts did just fine with no internet whatsoever! I remember when we got our first smartphone in 2013, it was very novel that we no longer needed to be at home or some place with WiFi to read emails. Needless to say, the novelty wore off fast, and now I wish we could still use our old 2G phones. I have a dream of someday inventing something that looks and works identically to, say, a Motorola StarTAC from 1996 (I mean identical, not one of those "re-imagined" abominations that are little more than variations of some basic Android-based piece of junk), but with a modern 4G or 5G radio instead of the old, outdated 1G and 2G of the original. One day! </rantmode> c

I have a Yahoo account that dates back to 2005 and two Gmail accounts from 2007 or 2009. Never needed to provide any information back then as I recall. A phone number was optional for password recovery I think. Nowadays is quite worrisome, as it seems like one can't do much of anything anymore without some sort of smartphone. I don't want to use a smartphone for everything! And I don't buy the hype that it's better, easier, faster and more secure! My opinion is that the only truly, 100% safe and secure computer system is one which is completely disconnected from the internet. Funding issues aside, there's probably a very good reason why the US government still uses computer mainframes from the 1960s for certain top-security concerns: because they're completely isolated from the rest of the internet, they're virtually unhackable. The preponderance of modern encryption algorithms and authentication rigamarole in virtually all aspects of the modern internet only serves to make computing more difficult, expensive and frustrating. It doesn't actually make anything "safer," contrary to what Google et. al. want people to believe. It's just another set of hoops to jump through. Nothing more. c

That's blasphemy! c

OK, forgot to update here that I managed to succeed! I followed the instructions at the RyanVM forums, added the latest 2019 post-EOS updates, and slipstreamed most of the whole thing into an OEM Dell XP x64 CD, and it works! (a handful of .NET and WMP updates wouldn't slipstream (nor would WMP11 itself), so I had to install those by hand after installing, which was mildly annoying, but far better than what would've been had I not made the updated installer, since it was maybe like 12 or 15 updates instead of 200+). Most importantly, I was able to preserve the OEM activation, so it behaves just as the untouched CD would, which is good because activating an OEM copy for which I don't have a product key is a pain. Recently, I did break down and install 7 on the same computer, so now I have both. It turns out that 7 actually does what I want better, if only by virtue of the fact that it can support newer, bug-fixed versions of the programs I wanted to use. After applying all the updates, it was almost uselessly slow until I disabled the Spectre and Meltdown patches (not best security practice, I know), but now it's only a little slow, particularly at starting up and launching programs; I attribute that mostly to the fact that it's installed on a spinning hard disk, though, so I can live with it (SSDs are so much faster!) I had XP x64 working very smoothly, but I wanted to use some hardware that only supports 7 and up, so, here I am. I still do think that, someday, someone somewhere should create a nicely-packaged unofficial SP 3, so that perhaps one can update a live installation, rather than slipstreaming the updates into a new installer CD (a somewhat tedious and error-prone task for the inexperienced), but absent that, this will suffice. c

Well, there goes any chance of me trying to upgrade to Windows 11.... I also have still resisted the upgrade to Windows 10, and still use a combination of XP, 7 and 8.1 for anything I can't do with macOS, which isn't much nowadays, to be honest). XP and 7 may be out of support and "unsecure" by modern standards, but I like how they work (especially XP), and locking them down so that they're relatively safe isn't that hard to do. The only notable obstacle, I've found, is finding hardware they'll actually boot on (VMs are okay for light stuff, like testing software and such, but there is no substitute for real hardware if I want to do anything more resource intensive). That being said, any Windows before 10 will someday no longer be viable for any modern purpose, so I'll have to just give up on Windows altogether when that happens. At this point, I'm already mostly using macOS anyway, so fortunately, it won't hurt much, though I have similar qualms about Apple too (while they're not nearly as bad as MS (indeed, of all the major Tech companies (MS, Google, Facebook, etc) Apple is actually among the least offensive and most privacy sensitive ones), I nevertheless don't trust them 100%, if only because they're so big). I'll keep watching from the sidelines, but I don't think I'll be doing anything but experimentation on an unimportant backup machine or VM, if I do decide to try Windows 11. c

True. It's definitely a nontrivial undertaking, but I really hope someone somewhere decides to do it, because the current state of affairs is stupid. I have a newish Skylake-based PC, and even that is struggling with the stupid internet. On an 800Mbps connection, no less!! And I was kindly updated to Firefox 91 ESR the other night, and you know what? Even though it did seem a bit faster, the new UI is ugly, and it partially broke all the userChrome cusomizations I'd made (out of fairness, though, it actually still renders it, which gives some hope). I was tired, so I went back to 78 ESR and hardcoded it to disable updates altogether, so I don't get updated (or even notified) again until I'm good and ready. c

The simple and concise version: I hate the modern Internet. The long version: Just about every imaginable aspect of it seems to demand infinite RAM and CPU cycles, and for what? To do the EXACT same things websites did 20 years ago (via Flash and, yes, ActiveX)?! And these sites managed to do what they did at about the same speeds sites do them now, with 1/10th the available resources! (the average PC in 2001 had probably 256 MB of RAM and 20 or so GB of disk storage, which is nothing by modern standards). And Google? It seems to me they're leveraging their immense size and reach to remake the Internet in their image (proprietary and exclusionary), simply because they can. And they pass it off as an improvement?? And don't even get me started about Facebook, one of the other major evils of the Internet industry... *grumble* What would be nice is if someone created a new browser, which incorporates a sensible, standard UI (something PM-like would be nice, but FF 5x.x would be okay too) and a light weight, efficient rendering engine which is highly compatible with Chrome where needed, but completely open with as little telemetry as possible (undoubtedly, there will be sites that require telemetry as a "feature," so this hypothetical browser would have to "emulate" enough of it to keep the site happy, but without the security risks). This browser should be cross-platform, and it should be backwards compatible as far back as reasonably possible by using basic APIs and simple runtimes wherever possible (think Mac OS back to 10.6 and Windows to at least XP SP2, but ideally XP RTM and 2000). If anyone wants to start this project, count me in as one of your first customers!! c