InterLinked

I've got MSE 4.4.304 installed per the consensus of it being the best version to install on XP. I'd like to get it working, and I'm perfectly fine with manually installing definitions, which is what I do on Vista anyways, and occasionally on W7 though auto-update there works on its own so that I never have a chance to download the definitions There's a procedure specified in the middle of this thread (now closed), from @heinoganda I believe: 1. Get the old good pe_patch.exe. 2. Rename mpam-fe.exe to TEMP.EXE 3. Use PE_PATCH to change "Sub-System Version" from 5.2 to 5.1 4. Use the reliable n7epsilon's PEChecksum.exe v. 1.4 to correct the PE Checksum. (or ModifyPE) 5. Rename TEMP.EXE to mpam-fe.exe and run it. I couldn't find PEChecksum, the file is no longer available, but ModifyPE works in XP. I changed Sub-System Version from 6.0 to 5.1 then clicked Save, then ran ModifyPE on it using: @echo off cd /D "%~dp0" modifype.exe TEMP.EXE -c pause Now, running the file, I don't see the "not a valid Win32 application" error, but nothing at all seems to happen. Thoughts? In Task Manager, I see TEMP.EXE for a couple seconds, then it disappears. I've tried killing MsMpEng.exe beforehand, and after TEMP.EXE exits that comes back up. Still red, no definitions installed. Previously, I also tried this script: However, this seems to auto-update MSE, which is not what I need - nor do I need it to download definitions. I'm just trying to install the mpam-fe.exe file I already have. I've also tried: For some reason, a minute or so after copying the files into that (originally empty) folder, they disappear. Not sure why, the folder is empty again. Seems that MSE is processing them, almost, but no change in the dashboard, everything is still red. Also tried this procedure: 1.239.450.0 is recommended, but I could only get MpSigStub from as new as mpam-fe 1.211.1490.0 without being TOO new... It runs, after about 30 seconds, it deletes the other extracted files in the directory, then exits. Again, it would SEEM that it was successful. Yet, MSE is as red as always. How can I actually install the current definitions? And if I can't install the current definitions, what are the latest definitions it will happily install?? **UPDATE:** Finally found some success! This page had it all: Turns out the definitions THEMSELVES did stop supporting XP at some point. I ran this one, and now my MSE is now yellow instead of red. That link in question (the latest XP-compatible mpam-fe.exe) is archived in the Wayback Machine (Internet Archive). I'm happy with that - I suppose it's yellow because it knows they are already old, and my MSE will never be green, and I should just live with that? Yellow is better than red, just want to know what I could expect here...

There is a thread there but for some reason, it's closed to replies. Not sure how they would feel if I started another one.

So I tried the procedure but it doesn't seem to be doing anything: Get the old good pe_patch.exe. Rename mpam-fe.exe to TEMP.EXE Use PE_PATCH to change "Sub-System Version" from 5.2 to 5.1 Use the reliable n7epsilon's PEChecksum.exe v. 1.4 to correct the PE Checksum. (or ModifyPE) This is the command-line to use in a CMD Box: PEChecksum -c TEMP.EXE Rename TEMP.EXE to mpam-fe.exe and run it. I couldn't find PEChecksum, the file is no longer available, but ModifyPE works in XP. I changed Sub-System Version from 6.0 to 5.1 then clicked Save. then I ran: @echo off cd /D "%~dp0" modifype.exe TEMP.EXE -c pause Now, running the file, I don't see the "not a valid Win32 application" error, but nothing at all seems to happen. Thoughts?

Beware... Do NOT install KBs 4019276 and 4459091 or you will completely break Microsoft Office encryption and who knows what else. That being said, these bring TLS 1.1 and 1.2 support to XP, but you can get them with other browsers like Firefox/New Moon anyways so it's the lesser of two evils for me

Alright, everyone, I did a fresh install and can confirm MSO 2010 works perfectly without those two problematic updates! Hopefully it's helpful if others in the future are having issues with MSO. 1. Replace MSO.DLL with MSO.DLL from KB 4092483 2. Do NOT install KBs 4019276 and 4459091 or you will completely break Microsoft Office encryption and who knows what else. That being said, these bring TLS 1.1 and 1.2 support to XP, but you can get them with other browsers like Firefox/New Moon anyways so it's the lesser of two evils for me Now... back to trying to figure out how to get MSE definitions to install...

Sorry, had to, it's not secure! There's login and stuff on some of those pages, and you get dinged big time in security tests and audits! Even W2K can do TLS 1.2 HTTPS so I saw no reason to allow HTTPs, and recently, < TLS 1.2, either. Even Lynx can do TLS 1.2. Yeah, SNI is a thing but it's been supported since IE6, so probably not a big concern these days. Correction: IE7 on Vista, apparently...

Some sites are TLS 1.2 only. I changed mine to no longer accept TLS 1 and 1.1 just last week.

I mean most sites which are TLS 1.2 only have CSS that IE8 can't render properly. Only older sites will work "fine" in IE8. These updates in question though seem to be the ones that break MSO so it's kind of a catch22...

Didn't even know that was possible, I'd heard of that for Vista but not XP! Firefox 52.9 ESR has TLS 1.2 support and New Moon even has TLS 1.3 support, so I don't think it's much of an issue. IE9 is really the oldest usable IE these days... IE8 is just too old now to work well at all, so no TLS 1.1/1.2 is probably fine, since it can't render those sites properly anyways. It's kind odd Microsoft makes XP users choose between Office encryption or better TLS... can't have your cake and eat it, too, I guess! But XP isn't usable for me without Office so that's the choice I'm making

Good news! 4019276 and 4459091 are the ONLY problematic updates for MSO! @win32 @Dave-H @daniel_k @Dylan Cruz Any cause for concern here? I think if we were all to uninstall these from production, MSO should suddenly start working again - in theory - it might be uninstalling won't undo the damage, and you'll need to not install these in the first place. What's odd is most updates show up as "Security update for WIndows XP..." and these both are just "Update for Windows XP..." - they must have done some major damage! I tested installing both of these updates, and that broke things, but surprisingly uninstalling the two updates did NOT fix things. Looks like the only option once you've installed is to nuke and start over, which seems bizarre. Uninstalling the updates doesn't seem to undo the damage, sadly. I'm blacklisting these updates in my notes so I don't install them accidentally!

Just wanted to throw this in here - some POS updates break XP. In one case of interest, Microsoft Office 2010. Avoid these POS updates! See:

So far: windowsxp-kb4019276-x86-embedded-enu is confirmed problematic. windowsxp-kb4459091-x86-embedded-enu is also problematic. Looks like these are both updates for TLS... interesting...

@daniel_k @Dave-H windowsxp-kb4019276-x86-embedded-enu is confirmed problematic. I was doing them one by one once I narrowed it down sufficiently. There may be others; I will try all of part 1 without that one. UPDATE: looks like there are others, still failed when I did them all. Narrowing down again Another update between 4089082 and 4459091 is also problematic.

I can confirm the issue is in List 1, let me try to narrow it down further.

@daniel_k GOOD NEWS, all! I can confirm just with SP4, encryption DOES WORK! This means I can provide a full list of all updates that were installed since then, and testing them is actually quite feasible: Directory of J:\ISOs\NT 5.1 (XP)\XP Updates Part 1 08/07/2020 11:30 AM <DIR> . 08/07/2020 11:30 AM <DIR> .. 09/10/2019 02:27 AM 686,312 windowsxp-kb3126587-x86-embedded-enu.exe 09/10/2019 02:27 AM 525,552 windowsxp-kb3139398-x86-embedded-enu.exe 09/10/2019 02:26 AM 520,432 windowsxp-kb3139914-x86-embedded-enu.exe 09/10/2019 02:24 AM 572,144 windowsxp-kb3140709-x86-embedded-enu.exe 09/10/2019 02:24 AM 1,029,872 windowsxp-kb3149090-x86-embedded-enu.exe 09/10/2019 02:22 AM 921,328 windowsxp-kb3161949-x86-embedded-enu.exe 09/09/2019 05:34 PM 898,288 windowsxp-kb3170455-x86-embedded-enu.exe 09/09/2019 05:32 PM 644,336 windowsxp-kb3183431-x86-embedded-enu.exe 09/09/2019 05:33 PM 1,714,928 windowsxp-kb3185911-x86-embedded-enu.exe 09/09/2019 05:31 PM 817,904 windowsxp-kb3196718-x86-embedded-enu.exe 09/18/2017 04:51 PM 620,272 windowsxp-kb3197835-x86-custom-enu.exe 09/09/2019 05:31 PM 912,624 windowsxp-kb3198510-x86-embedded-enu.exe 09/18/2017 04:47 PM 1,553,136 windowsxp-kb4012583-x86-custom-enu.exe 09/09/2019 05:30 PM 579,824 windowsxp-kb4012584-x86-embedded-enu.exe 08/06/2020 08:12 PM 681,200 windowsxp-kb4012598-x86-custom-enu_eceb7d5023bbb23c0dc633e46b9c2f14fa6ee9dd.exe 09/09/2019 05:30 PM 1,238,256 windowsxp-kb4014652-x86-embedded-enu.exe 09/09/2019 05:29 PM 546,032 windowsxp-kb4014794-x86-embedded-enu.exe 09/18/2017 04:50 PM 681,712 windowsxp-kb4018466-x86-custom-enu.exe 09/18/2017 04:53 PM 1,460,976 windowsxp-kb4019204-x86-custom-enu.exe 09/09/2019 04:37 PM 1,125,104 windowsxp-kb4019276-x86-embedded-enu.exe 09/18/2017 04:48 PM 557,296 windowsxp-kb4022747-x86-custom-enu.exe 09/18/2017 04:51 PM 866,544 windowsxp-kb4024323-x86-custom-enu.exe 09/18/2017 04:52 PM 1,065,200 windowsxp-kb4024402-x86-custom-enu.exe 09/18/2017 04:52 PM 531,184 windowsxp-kb4025218-x86-custom-enu.exe 09/09/2019 05:26 PM 579,312 windowsxp-kb4025409-x86-embedded-enu.exe 09/09/2019 05:26 PM 915,696 windowsxp-kb4025497-x86-embedded-enu.exe 09/09/2019 05:25 PM 2,745,072 windowsxp-kb4034775-x86-embedded-enu.exe 09/09/2019 05:24 PM 2,351,856 windowsxp-kb4039384-x86-embedded-enu.exe 09/09/2019 05:23 PM 893,680 windowsxp-kb4041995-x86-embedded-enu.exe 09/09/2019 05:22 PM 1,065,192 windowsxp-kb4047211-x86-embedded-enu.exe 09/09/2019 05:22 PM 584,424 windowsxp-kb4052303-x86-embedded-enu.exe 09/09/2019 05:16 PM 541,376 windowsxp-kb4056564-x86-embedded-enu.exe 09/09/2019 05:21 PM 662,760 windowsxp-kb4056941-x86-embedded-enu.exe 09/09/2019 05:19 PM 914,624 windowsxp-kb4089082-x86-embedded-enu.exe 09/09/2019 05:20 PM 643,768 windowsxp-kb4089175-x86-embedded-enu.exe 09/09/2019 05:15 PM 1,061,568 windowsxp-kb4089453-v2-x86-embedded-enu.exe 09/09/2019 05:19 PM 687,800 windowsxp-kb4089694-x86-embedded-enu.exe 09/09/2019 05:18 PM 531,136 windowsxp-kb4091756-x86-embedded-enu.exe 09/09/2019 05:16 PM 931,008 windowsxp-kb4101477-x86-embedded-enu.exe 09/09/2019 05:17 PM 571,584 windowsxp-kb4130957-x86-embedded-enu.exe 09/09/2019 04:53 PM 1,194,176 windowsxp-kb4291391-x86-embedded-enu.exe 09/09/2019 05:14 PM 524,480 windowsxp-kb4294413-x86-embedded-enu.exe 09/09/2019 04:33 PM 3,036,168 windowsxp-kb4457163-x86-embedded-enu.exe 09/22/2019 11:38 AM 1,471,696 windowsxp-kb4458000-x86-embedded-enu.exe 09/09/2019 04:34 PM 583,376 windowsxp-kb4458001-x86-embedded-enu.exe 09/09/2019 04:31 PM 1,208,960 windowsxp-kb4458006-x86-embedded-enu.exe 09/09/2019 04:32 PM 586,640 windowsxp-kb4458318-x86-embedded-enu.exe 09/09/2019 04:36 PM 742,696 windowsxp-kb4459091-x86-embedded-enu.exe 09/09/2019 04:30 PM 729,424 windowsxp-kb4462935-x86-embedded-enu.exe 09/09/2019 04:29 PM 2,560,832 windowsxp-kb4463103-x86-embedded-enu.exe 09/09/2019 04:28 PM 663,080 windowsxp-kb4463573-x86-embedded-enu.exe 09/09/2019 04:27 PM 2,503,416 windowsxp-kb4467689-x86-embedded-enu.exe 09/09/2019 04:35 PM 679,144 windowsxp-kb4467770-x86-embedded-enu.exe 09/09/2019 04:28 PM 578,840 windowsxp-kb4470118-x86-embedded-enu.exe 09/22/2019 11:40 AM 1,456,872 windowsxp-kb4473077-x86-embedded-enu.exe 09/09/2019 04:22 PM 1,553,448 windowsxp-kb4486463-x86-embedded-enu.exe 09/09/2019 04:24 PM 681,512 windowsxp-kb4486465-x86-embedded-enu_flagged.exe 09/09/2019 04:14 PM 527,912 windowsxp-kb4486468-x86-embedded-enu.exe 09/09/2019 04:13 PM 582,904 windowsxp-kb4486536-x86-embedded-enu.exe 09/09/2019 04:14 PM 653,864 windowsxp-kb4486538-x86-embedded-enu.exe 09/09/2019 03:59 PM 536,104 windowsxp-kb4487990-x86-embedded-enu.exe 09/09/2019 04:21 PM 521,984 windowsxp-kb4489493-x86-embedded-enu.exe 09/09/2019 04:19 PM 729,840 windowsxp-kb4489973-x86-embedded-enu.exe 09/09/2019 04:11 PM 655,912 windowsxp-kb4489977-x86-embedded-enu.exe 09/09/2019 04:19 PM 938,528 windowsxp-kb4490228-x86-embedded-enu.exe 09/09/2019 04:15 PM 770,808 windowsxp-kb4490501-x86-embedded-enu.exe 09/09/2019 04:09 PM 601,640 windowsxp-kb4491443-x86-embedded-enu.exe 09/09/2019 04:12 PM 524,840 windowsxp-kb4493341-x86-embedded-enu.exe 09/09/2019 04:08 PM 2,463,272 windowsxp-kb4493563-x86-embedded-enu.exe 09/09/2019 04:07 PM 1,383,160 windowsxp-kb4493790-x86-embedded-enu.exe 09/09/2019 04:02 PM 718,888 windowsxp-kb4493793-x86-embedded-enu.exe 09/09/2019 04:02 PM 681,512 windowsxp-kb4493794-x86-embedded-enu.exe 09/09/2019 04:03 PM 661,544 windowsxp-kb4493795-x86-embedded-enu.exe 09/09/2019 04:05 PM 1,097,248 windowsxp-kb4493796-x86-embedded-enu.exe 09/09/2019 04:06 PM 667,896 windowsxp-kb4493797-x86-embedded-enu.exe 09/09/2019 04:04 PM 1,466,104 windowsxp-kb4493927-x86-embedded-enu.exe 09/09/2019 04:06 PM 551,464 windowsxp-kb4494059-x86-embedded-enu.exe 09/09/2019 04:00 PM 1,673,768 windowsxp-kb4494528-x86-embedded-enu.exe 09/09/2019 04:01 PM 1,339,944 windowsxp-kb4495022-x86-embedded-enu.exe 08/06/2020 08:13 PM 531,496 windowsxp-kb4500331-x86-custom-enu_d7206aca53552fececf72a3dee93eb2da0421188.exe 80 File(s) 77,466,704 bytes 2 Dir(s) 104,232,353,792 bytes free J:\ISOs\NT 5.1 (XP)\XP Updates Part 1> Directory of J:\ISOs\NT 5.1 (XP)\XP Updates Part 2 08/09/2020 06:02 AM <DIR> . 08/09/2020 06:02 AM <DIR> .. 08/07/2020 11:44 AM 8,567 28720555_015c21729f07635e431fd24cc13abd47557bc8fb.cab 08/07/2020 11:44 AM 10,984,192 ie8-windowsxp-kb4493435-x86-embedded-enu_1029e7193ca4b683d1d0c1996bc7c66f1a2ae37f.exe 08/07/2020 11:41 AM 708,848 windowsxp-kb2926765-x86-embedded-enu_fd1b4b0791354fab04ae68907436cab0c8676665.exe 08/07/2020 11:42 AM 2,459,376 windowsxp-kb4018556-v2-x86-embedded-enu_8532522cbd2663dac730235ee0645738538db8a1.exe 08/07/2020 11:42 AM 653,552 windowsxp-kb4022746-x86-embedded-enu_c8cee9e23429d15d9a21529b7eaedde935b36699.exe 08/07/2020 11:42 AM 652,528 windowsxp-kb4025398-x86-embedded-enu_b411279fb7dcde2856026476b626f2f12b518a9d.exe 08/07/2020 11:43 AM 729,784 windowsxp-kb4034044-x86-embedded-enu_2eed2f8234cf7d6326ece957d4309979faf9d84a.exe 08/07/2020 11:43 AM 2,561,736 windowsxp-kb4230467-x86-embedded-enu_69c28fc46349590c7c1241a5076f092e0c34df22.exe 08/07/2020 11:43 AM 809,152 windowsxp-kb4293928-x86-embedded-enu_a7875c9e80327caef6fb5dc416daae2af3f98252.exe 08/07/2020 11:43 AM 1,384,416 windowsxp-kb4458003-x86-embedded-enu_a17d87d408201c9d690d726da04d09f717bc661e.exe 10 File(s) 20,952,151 bytes 2 Dir(s) 104,232,198,144 bytes free

Sad but true! XP to me is useless without fully functioning Office though, so I'll take encryption over a few POS updates any day. Thanks for verifying!!! Oh boy! I did something similar with slipstreaming Vista a while back in a different manner than I did recently. However, I didn't do one by one, that would have taken forever. I did them in batches and then tested to see if it would work. It was more involved because it involved creating an ISO each time and seeing if installation could start or if it failed. This should be a bit easier than that. I'm going to try a base SP4 install right now and see if that works or not. If not, it's a POS update between SP3 and the cutoff for SP4 most likely. Unfortunately, I don't have a full list of updates, and I don't have the updates themselves which are included in SP4. I don't think I can selectively uninstall them from Control Panel since it's a SP, either. I did find this 1.9 GB of purportedly all XP updates, ever: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kuB4Rj7bIBQ5LljPUe34hPP_C0Dled76/view Not sure where the SP3 cutoff is. Anyone got ideas or want to help tackle this? Would be great to fix this bug... thanks, Microsoft!!

Does this matter though if SSL2/3 are disabled? What would be the 64-bit reg script? Thanks!

Hey @i430VX! Are you still working on this? I forked your installer a while back so it would work systemwide and crossplatform unlike the original one which did not, at least not back in February. But maybe if you want to integrate some of those changes back upstream, that would help the community a bit. I published my forked version here: https://w2k.phreaknet.org I haven't repackaged it, all my changes are in Install.bat I added a changelog at the top which hits on the main things I changed if you want to look at it. My modifications have made it work perfectly for my needs but I stopped there and am not adding to it for others, so if you want to integrate these changes that might be helpful.

Seems to check out for me as well! Hooray for Vista!

Huh, that's interesting! Yeah, all mine are the new XML format, and I can't convert them to the old one, I need the new features. I definitely worked with encrypted DOCX and XLSX files on XP in the past, and I never had issues like this. Then again, it was 8 years ago, so much could have "broken" since then. It would be a shame to have to either roll back MSO 2010 some time or roll back XP SP3 some time, but either one or the other or both is causing issues. Since you said it's not part of Office, it's sounding to me like something with XP has broken since then?? I'm trying to piece together the pieces but it's all not making much sense to me, I'm afraid!

Works fine with the 32-bit version on W7, and should do on Vista - I will install and check. It definitely USED to. I worked with encrypted documents on XP SP3 and Office 2010 back in the day and there were no issues. This was around 8 years ago, maybe. Office is completely useless to me without proper encryption support, since I use it constantly. I'm hoping we can still find a workaround to this, but good to know I guess it's not just me. I suspect then that it's NOT just MSO.DLL that was broken - maybe that was an obvious one. However, I tried replacing schannel.dll and crypt32.dll and that did NOT do the trick, either - even those bring read-only encryption support to W2K. So, something is definitely very wrong here. Thoughts, anyone? Getting MSE 4.4.304 to install definitions and, more importantly, getting encryption working, seem to be the only things left to do to make XP SP3 crank along "just like new" again! Hope it can be done! It would be fully usable with encryption support, otherwise it's more like a toy to me, like W2K is sadly...

I had a hard time ciphering through it all. I got 4.4.304 installed as indicated, but I'm just confused about why it says not a valid Win32 application, which doesn't seem to be the issue discussed there. These are the definitions we're talking about here, the 64 bit version of which work fine on the same 4.4.304 in Vista. So I'm wondering what's amiss - perhaps the definitions do no longer support XP, in which case what are the newest ones that do work, so I can use those? That looks like a Vista screenshot - I just installed 4.4.304 today and I have the latest definitions so mine is all up to date. I'm entirely aware that MSE will probably never offer adequate, realtime protection, but that's not really what I was looking for anyways. More just something lightweight that was better than nothing, since my brain is my primary antimalware! Of course, if there's a newer version than 4.4.304 that works on Vista still, I'd be open to hearing about it - but it seemed the consensus on that thread was there was not.

This thread has been most helpful, thank you! Installed MSE on my Windows Vista x64 and it promptly refused to do anything. Installed the 4.4.304 version and no issues, since. I ran the latest definition from the Microsoft website for 64-bit today and now it's up to date and humming smoothly, wonderful! Any thoughts on this situation for XP? I installed the 4.4.304 version for XP as well and that part works, but trying to run the 32-bit definition install just says: "mpam-fe.exe is not a valid Win32 application" Do MSE definition updates no longer work on Windows XP???? If that's the case, what was the last definition update that did, so I could at least get it as much up to date as possible? I am trying to install the latest 32-bit definitions from: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/971606/how-to-manually-download-the-latest-definition-updates-for-microsoft-s Anyone on XP SP3 with MSE 4.4.304 having issues installing those 32-bit definitions?

Question for everyone using MSO on XP SP3 With it as updated as reasonably possible, are you able to work with encrypted documents? Try saving a test encrypted document with password "test" - is Word happy about that or does it give you an error? I'm thinking the MSO updates may have broken much MORE than just MSO.DLL...

Hi, Dave, Yes, now that I extracted the MSO.DLL it would be fairly trivial to automate, My problem now is that encryption seems to be broken, now! I posted about that a few messages back here.