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It's mid August, and WU and MU are still working fine on Windows 2000 and XP-x64 over here, with no signs of it stopping any time soon (I'd imagine it would display a warning to the effect of, "Windows[Microsoft] Update will be shutting down soon" to give users some advance warning. I'm starting to think maybe this was just some F.U.D designed to scare off the few who are still using XP. c

Oh, yeah, I did install those! That's what got me from the "This page cannot load" screen to the Windows Update error. It was late, and I forgot to mention that. But, it's all moot now, as somehow I managed to get it to work! Apparently I was almost there. I needed only to install a couple of cumulative IE6 updates (I forget the KB numbers; the laptop I had the VM on died this morning, so I have to wait until I've copied everything off its drive to check what they were), and then everything just worked! A .NET update (1.1 SP1) complained and wouldn't install at first, but I retried it and it installed fine the second time. Now I have to find the post-EOL updates and install those! c

Hi, OK, I've decided to setup a fresh install before the Windows Update servers go offline, but when I try to run WU, I get error# 0x80072F7D. Are there any updates I must install manually to fix this error? I have installed so far: Service Pack 4 KB835732 Update Rollup 1 Internet Explorer 6 The latest WU agent Windows Installer 3.1 And none of it has resolved the error. Any help will be much appreciated! Thank you! c

Interesting! You're multilingual! I'm not a linguist by any means, but I self-learned some of these interesting tidbits while taking a Spanish class, so if I may, I'd like to expand on and clarify your information a bit: English is, as you seem to imply, actually a Germanic language, which means it has common roots shared by German and Dutch (similar grammar and syntax). However, the language was heavily influenced by French and, by extension, Latin, due to the Nordic Conquest of England during the Middle Ages (around the 10th-11th centuries), primarily in the form of new words and phrases. So, as a result of this, modern English could be thought of as a sort of hybrid, because it has characteristics of both language families. OK, back on topic now! c

I just uninstalled all but Stylish and CTR, and sure enough, all is well again. I'm now going to reinstall the removed ones one by one until I can determine which one was at fault. EDIT: Done! Turns out, all but NoScript were versions that apparently have limited/broken support for Firefox 45, which was causing bookmarks and history to break (i.e., they were too new). I used the Classic Add-ons Archive add-on to find and install versions that explicitly state support for 45, and voila! All is working as it should once again. I probably would've figured it out by my self in time, but your posts helped speed things up. Thank you! c

I have a problem! I just installed FireFox 45 SSE, and the browsing history and bookmarking mechanisms are broken (the Library window is empty and none of the buttons work). It seems to work normally with a default, empty profile and a profile with my bookmarks added. The trouble seems to begin when I begin installing addons. I'm not sure what's causing it, but these are the addons I'm using: Classic Theme Restorer AdBlocker Ultimate Privacy Badger Ghostery Downloads Window I doubt they would be causing the problem, as I use them all the time without any problems, including with FF45SSE, but maybe there's a version conflict? But then, if that were so, then why did they all install properly? Thanks! EDIT: This is on a fully updated Windows XP x64 install. c

Has anyone checked out these: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/913086/security-updates-are-available-on-iso-9660-dvd5-image-files-from-the-m They appear to only go back to 2006, and they include all kinds of superfluous updates for later versions, but it could be useful for something? c

Indeed. With 5eraph's update packs (and KB4500331) integrated, it should be fairly trivial to figure out all the .Net updates, as they should be the only ones offered (unless I also install WMP11). c

Ah, of course! I had forgotten about this! Thank you very much! I'm integrating it now, and hopefully that May 2019 update too. Is there an easy way to integrate the .Net Frameworks? A brief search turned up little. c

Or maybe an update rollup which includes compatible post-EOS updates from Win2k3? Just wondering, because slipstreaming them all one by one is a bit tedious. c

Windows Update is still working fine for me as of today, July 20, at 2:04 PM Pacific time! c

Neat! Snow Leopard is the Mac equivalent of XP (despite being contemporary with 7; both saw their initial RTM releases in mid 2009). Does this work with 45 as well, or is it limited to 38? For late-model PowerPC Macs (Most fast G4s and all G5s), you want to target TenFourFox, whose latest version is forked from Firefox 45 (it lost source parity I think a couple years ago because there were some things that simply weren't portable). I think your script will be very helpful for that, as TFF is fairly decent, but it's configured as one-size-fits-most, so it could use some extra optimization, particularly on faster machines, to reach its full potential (it's extremely good as is, though!) If you could also try testing your script with ArcticFox, that would be useful too, as that is supposed to be a fork of Pale Moon (akin to Roytam1's New Moon, but for early Intel Macs), and thus should be more or less compatible with your script as is, but should be tested for any Mac-specific peculiarities. I can try it out on my Mac, if you like, as I have ArcticFox installed on it. Let's keep up the good work!! c

I'm going to look into trying this, but one quick note: your links are reversed! the link for 45 ESR leads to the 38 ESR UOC patch and vice versa. c

Indeed! c

As I do. There's no point in trying to respond to that vitriolic nonsense (now, the point of separating branding and redirecting help/support links to this forum thread instead of his site is a fair point and makes sense. What isn't fair is his seemingly compulsive need to viciously berate anyone who dares modify and use his product (or a derivative thereof) on an OS he doesn't support. Just let him do whatever he does, filter out whatever information is actually useful from that which is intended to insult or criticize, and move on. Some people just don't like to play fair. c

@digzu I agree. It seems that, among desktop PCs/laptops, there are three choices: Firefox based (which won't be much of an option much longer, with the way they keep jerking off their loyal user base by removing basic features that basically define what Firefox is; without those features (XUL/legacy extensions and advanced UI customization abilities, to name a couple), Firefox is little more than a distantly-related variant of Chromium), Chromium based or Apple's Safari (which is Webkit based; I believe Webkit is a derivative of Chromium, or vice versa, so maybe this one doesn't count?) I'm not sure what Opera is based on, but I think current versions are Chromium based, yes? Anyway, I suppose it's not unprecedented (look at the first "browser wars": we had IE and Netscape. All the others were marginalized, with tiny slivers of market share-- much the same as now, it seems....) I'm not saying it's ideal, but it's just the way things have always been, practically since the beginning of the modern Internet (the first few years were quite free, but then MS became interested and wanted to control the browser market, and the rest, as they say, is history. Others tried to compete (most notably, Netscape), but ultimately, MS was too big and powerful for them. Somewhat like Google now (Google basically invented Chromium, and my understanding is that they license out the Chromium sources, hence why we have so many different versions of it). c

Excellent work! Has anyone managed to get the WU website *itself* on the Wayback machine in some form? Perhaps if someone were to reverse engineer it somehow, it can be used to download updates in the future? c

@Jody Thornton Thank you for that, but I think I've found a workaround! It's called Personalization10 by WinAero: It was meant for Windows 10 and it's user hostile settings app, but it seems to work quite well on my Highly modified Windows 8.1 install (as you can see, I have the classic theme fully enabled and configured to look like Windows 7's classic theme, but with full hardware acceleration!) I shall still investigate your suggestion, however, as it would be nice to get the native Win8.1 version working, if that's possible. c

I'd like to know, is it possible to use the old Display control panel, in its entirety, from XP? I have enabled the somewhat buggy, but usable classic theme, but it breaks the Personalization control panel, so I can't change the desktop icons, wallpaper or screensaver. Altenatively, can we somehow get the Windows 7 Personalization to work? Thanks! c

I know this thread is old, but I wanted to share: This is my Windows 8.1 desktop! The classic theme is a little glitchy with some built in programs, like the photo previewer, and minimize/restore animations are aero style, but it's mostly perfect! c

Me again So, why I haven't been here? Well, awhile back, I managed to get my Windows 7 install fixed (I used a different license), but somehow in the process, I managed to break the 8.1 install (probably because I tried to enable the Classic theme, and something went wrong), so I got rid of it. I was using the Mac side almost exclusively, so it wasn't really a big deal, but I did boot into 7 occasionally to keep it updated and stuff (and to let it know that it wasn't forgotten ) Fast forward to now, however, and I have built myself another PC, this time a Core2 Quad-based one because it was cheap (only cost me ~$30!), and I had most of the parts already (save for RAM and CPU, else it would've cost me $0), many of which were bought in 2008-2009, when Core2 was current-- my, how time flies! This was because my Skylake machine had to go to storage while we prepare for a big move, and I wanted a relatively expendable desktop (in case it gets destroyed or lost) I could use in the meantime. Anyway, it's only now that I've finally begun to appreciate the scope and severity of the performance penalties this Spectre/Meltdown patch incurs, particularly on older platforms. I say this because I have installed 8.1 on it, and, while it was no speed demon (XP was better), its performance was OK. After updating to the latest patch level, however, it became seriously slow. I figured that was just the way it is; I've seen the same thing happen to XP over the years - in the RTM and SP1 days, it was fast and lean, and felt very much like 2000 with a new coat of paint and some much needed performance enhancements, but when SP2 came along, it started to feel slower and more bloated, particularly on older PIII and Athlon stuff - so I didn't give it much thought (this *is* a PC based on 12-year old technology, after all! I never expected it to be particularly fast.) That being said, here are the basic specs: Core2 Quad Q9550 @ 2.83 GHz 8 GB DDR2 800 RAM 1 TB SATA3 hard drive On paper, this machine's no slouch! It is among the best that 2008 had to offer. In practice, however, something's not adding up! So, as I was browsing round, looking for new threads and posts of interest, I came across this one again, and it reminded me that this could be one of the reasons for the slowness, because it occurred to me that this machine flew on XP (which never received a Specre/Meltdown patch), so I speculated that perhaps this patch was the cause of the extreme slowness I was experiencing. I subsequently downloaded InSpecre and disabled the Meltdown protection, and.... Aha!! It was the patch! This machine feels at least twice as fast now! Tasks that were a struggle yesterday, before disabling the patch (Firefox would take ages to load anything; Pro tools, which wasn't expected to be the sprightliest anyway, was downright miserable), today are an absolute breeze, relatively speaking! So, I'll add this anecdote to the discussion, as the "up to 50%" penalty this patch incurs is bad enough for modern Intel systems (as NoelC and others have seen), but it *really hurts badly* on Core2-era machines! Even the fast ones! However, there's still that 8% performance drop even with the patches disabled (but not removed), but after experiencing what a 50% drop feels like, 8% is not so bad! c

I know it's not supported, but is there a way to force the issue? I have a Firewire audio interface (Focusrite Saffire LE) which is supposedly compatible with XP x64, and yet, I can't get it to work. Is there a driver from Vista I can hack in or something? If not, I'd be content switching to 32-bit XP. Just wanted to know if there's any way to get 64-bit XP to work, as I'm not too keen on reinstalling everything for the *third* time. c

I don't think even Google is this devious! I think cloudflare.com and akamaitechnologies.com are relatively safe (in that I don't believe they're not being used by a foreign government to gather information), but those other ones are downright creepy! What happens when this browser is run on something newer, like Windows 7? c

Yes, I remember using IE 5.x and 6.x back in 2003-2006 (before I discovered Firefox) and it seemed to be the most well supported at the time. Looking at now, I think Google has employed similar anti competitive tactics with regard to Chrome; it isn't necessarily a better browser, it's just that Google has deliberately done some shady things to make it look better than it really is (for example, deliberately using a deprecated JS API in YouTube which *no other browser supports*), and has leveraged this on their user base to unfairly increase Chrome's market share at its competitors' expense, primarily by making them look bad. It reminds me an awful lot of how MS made Netscape look bad by deliberately configuring Windows (and manipulating various key standards) in such a way that Netscape would break in various subtle ways. The unsuspecting user, of course, didn't care and went to IE because it rendered pages better, ran faster, and didn't crash. It's been my observation that history tends to repeat itself, and I find it particularly ridiculous that Google vs. Firefox is playing out almost *exactly* 20 years after MS vs. Netscape, and in virtually the same manner to boot! c

That graph speaks volumes! I'm often dismayed by how poorly all the other search engines work compared to Google, which I'd prefer not to use. However, the sad fact is that it's virtually impossible to not use, and I'm beginning to understand why that is: Google either owns, or plays a part in maintaining, virtually all the services and technologies the modern WWW operates on (about the only thing they don't have direct control over are the back hauls and fiber optic lines that make everything work; AT&T and Verizon own most of that in the US, apparently). Most of the rest (in the US, anyway) is owned and/or operated by Amazon or Facebook And even if none of this were true, it might as well be, given how Google treats its competition (in terms of browsers, Firefox has probably been the only significant competitor for awhile now, and it seems to be losing). c