Tomcat76

I eventually ordered the Red. According to the salesperson, "small" errors are corrected within the 7 second time frame that TLER allows; "serious" errors (CRC errors) that would require more than 7 seconds to correct, rarely happen, and if they do, it shouldn't be much of a concern as any damaged file(s) can be copied over to the backup again (preferably on a new hard drive). I'm still curious to know if it's OK to clone from a 512e disk to a 512n disk.

This is a peculiar problem I've been having with one PC. It was originally running Windows Vista 64-bit, but later formatted and loaded with Windows 7 64-bit. I can't remember if the problem already existed when Windows Vista was still installed, but I presume it was because I now feel this to be a hardware problem. When hitting Start > Restart, I expect Windows to shutdown, the computer to restart, the POST to load, etc. However, something seems to be going wrong after Windows closes: the screen goes black as expected, but the POST never appears. All fans and hard drives are spinning and all lights are burning. The only way to get the computer running again when that happens is to either press the reset button or to shut the PC down and power it on again. The motherboard in question is an Asus M4A87TD EVO. I have tried to fix this on various occasions over the past year or so, without success. Some people suggested to disable the power saving settings on the Firewire port, but I had already done that before (out of habit). So I did the reverse, and re-enabled the power saving settings but that didn't help. Next, I disabled the Firewire port but that didn't change anything either. Recently, I also read somewhere that it could be a keyboard incompatibility; some people have fixed this by swapping their keyboard. This didn't seem to help me either. On the VERY odd occasion, over the past week or so, I have noticed the computer to shutdown instead of exhibiting the problem above, as if I clicked Start > Shutdown instead of Start > Restart. Don't know if that's a clue. Is there anything else to try? Change the power supply? Flip the connector of the reset switch cable in case it wasn't connected the right way? Change the power state setting in the BIOS (currently set to "S1 only")? Reload the latest BIOS?

Usually, when you buy a low profile card, it comes with the full height bracket connected to it. The low profile bracket is included as an accessory. Do you still have the full height bracket? I just did four in the past week, including two repastes. Always a pleasure

I'm trying to find the best 4TB hard drive I can get for the purpose of manually backing up (copying) files to at an average rate of once or twice a month (once or twice a week maximum). The hard drive will be placed in a computer running Windows 7 64-bit, so I suppose I should better avoid 4Kn drives. So far, though, it seems that everything I'm looking for in such a drive doesn't appear to be provided by any manufacturer; it's all black & white with nothing in between. I'm looking for a drive with a high level of reliability and durability, but without TLER (or at least the ability to disable it). I will be running it in a non-RAID setup in a regular PC, not in a NAS, so I would like the drive to do whatever it can to recover data in case of a failure. The drive should be internal and be able to work inside a computer that's running 24/7. High level of reliability = NAS or data center drives Without TLER = desktop drives See my problem? In addition, HGST doesn't even mention TLER in the spec sheet for their Ultrastar 7K6000 (data center) and Desktop NAS drives. Neither does Toshiba. Several online sources claim that you can use a tool to disable TLER on Western Digital Red and Gold drives, but it's intended for older drives and may corrupt the firmware. I'm a little tight on budget, so I'd prefer not to risk killing a drive. The list: - Toshiba MD04ACA400 (0.6M MTTF / 7200rpm / 128MB cache / 512e) - Toshiba N300 (1M MTTF / 7200rpm / 128MB / sector size not listed) - HGST Ultrastar 7K6000 (2M MTBF / 7200rpm / 128MB / 512n or 512e) - WD RED WD40EFRX (1M MTBF / 5400rpm / 64MB / 512e) - WD GOLD WD4002FYYZ (2M MTBF / 7200rpm / 128MB / 512n) I know the MTBF figures should be taken with a grain of salt, but I'm listing them anyway. Note that Toshiba uses MTTF as opposed to MTBF used by other manufacturers. A rough head calculation, though, indicates that their MTTF rating would amount to a little less than 1M MTBF. But that's probably a moot point. On the point of 512n (native) and 4TB, is it still safe to have 4TB crammed into a hard drive using 512b native sectors? Also, I intend to clone an existing 4TB hard drive to it, but it's a 512e (emulated) drive. Is it safe to clone 4TB 512e to 4TB 512n or should I take additional precautions?

Sorry about the delay. My budget is actually pretty close to nothing. I will have to borrow the money and pay them back later, so I'd like to keep the amount of components at a minimum. I've also decided to forgo having the option to overclock the CPU so I don't need to get a K. I also had a chat with a salesperson at a computer store I usually buy from, and he advised me to not go for something too old as I may have to buy it second-hand (due to unavailability), which has the added risk of getting components that ran overclocked for an extended period of time, especially in the case of enthousiast boards like the Asus P8Z68 Deluxe. Correct me if I'm wrong, but that appears to be software intended for Intel-made motherboards. Can it be used with Asus/Asrock boards? But that's an interesting point you raise there. A week ago, I couldn't immediately find a Z87 board to my liking; only Z97 boards. But I'll look again. Just in case somebody's wondering why I'm never mentioning Gigabyte boards... I have used them on computers for clients and think they are a good brand too, but I prefer not to get one for a computer of my own because of their policy on killing PCIe ports. I know CPUs provide only a limited amount of lanes, but Gigabyte's strategy on disabling PCIe slots or reducing their levels seems more aggressive than with Asus' or Asrock's. I still want the ability to use as many PCIe slots as possible, so I'd rather see a 16x slot reduced to 8x than having all 1x slots disabled. Another point I seem to have neglected is how much any PCI ports on more modern motherboards can handle. If I want to keep on using my Audigy 2 PCI card (I know it's considered the worst of all Audigy's, but still), it needs to work. In light of this, I'm wondering if there's any use in upgrading to an Audigy RX PCIe card. I've been told it's a "budget" card, but does it have at least the same quality as the Audigy 2?

There do appear to be drivers for the HD 4400 and 4600 graphics for XP. liquidLD posted HD 4600 drivers here but he needs to update the links. The same goes for the Killer E2200 chip, which appears to be an Atheros AR8161 for which XP drivers do exist (discussion here). Realtek audio isn't an issue either. As far as more recent chipsets go... I'd still like to have a working onboard video chip as a backup. My video card could die, or I may want to put it in a temporary replacement PC for a customer whose PC I need to repair. It can always come in handy. Also, all programs I use currently and intend to use in the "new" XP computer are single-core applications, so more cores aren't necessarily going to improve my experience as opposed to "raw power". The second computer I intend to build (storage + video editing) needs to be ready for programs like Premiere and Vegas Pro. Having more cores might serve me better there. So basically, we're back at USB 3 I don't mind a little tinkering around, but all USB 3 ports need to work, even if they operate at USB 2.0 speeds. Having only one usable USB 3 port to which a USB hub needs to be connected is a bridge too far for me. The same goes for a USB 3.0 PCIe expansion card; I don't want to waste PCIe slots. It's a bit unclear to me which chips work OK at 2.0 speeds, and which require the USB hub workaround. Would that be 7/8/9-series chipsets vs 100+ series chipsets? Or is it about USB 3.0 vs 3.1? Currently, I think I'd either go with: Z68 + Sandy Bridge, Z68 + Ivy Bridge, or Z97 + Haswell Refresh/Devil's Canyon (i5-4690K or i7-4790K) I'm not yet sure how Ivy Bridge and Sandy Bridge compare in terms of heat (OC'd or not). Still need to find that out.

Just wondering... Everyone keeps talking about USB 3.0, but what about the rest? How do I know there are chipset drivers, sata drivers, onboard video drivers, etc. compatible with Windows XP if the board manufacturer won't list any? For example: ASRock Z97 Pro4 ASRock Fatal1ty Z97 Killer I know mechanical hard drives don't saturate the SATA3 ports, but reading and writing operations are still faster than when connected to SATA2 ports. I have tested this myself, both with the onboard SATA2 ports of my P7H55 board, as well as with the HighPoint RocketRAID 2640X1 PCIe card with SATA2 ports. My onboard SATA3 ports are faster. I will. I don't plan to upgrade it again. The board needs to be durable and be able to withstand 24/7 operation.

@jaclaz: thanks for the info. Sorry, I meant H55, not P55. I didn't say there was anything wrong with H61, just that the upgrade level isn't that big with H55>H61 as it is with H55>Z68. The H61 you linked to has PCIe 2.0, doesn't have USB 3.0, there are 3 usable PCIe ports and 2 SATAIII 6Gbps ports, exactly like on my P7H55 board. The Asus P8Z68 Deluxe/Gen3 has PCIe 3.0, has USB 3.0 (including front panel), 4 usable PCIe ports (if installing a dual slot graphics card) and 4 SATAIII 6Gbps ports. I suppose I can get away with PCIe 2.0, but I would like to have the rest. I read about this in another thread on MSFN. Do I understand correctly if I read that only one USB 3.0 port on the motherboard will be usable, and that a USB hub is required to split it across multiple USB devices? I wouldn't call that a fix, but I don't want to get into semantics. I haven't used a USB hub in well over 15 years (even the internal 5.25" floppy drive stayed in much longer), but if people can live with it... great. "Better" is usually better, but I think it's over the top for me. I'd also prefer to use a VelociRaptor over a SATA/mSATA/NVMe on Windows XP. Too lazy to trim... ::scratches-beard::

@jaclaz I'm not worried about not being able to use such large drives to install Windows on. In fact, it's pretty common. I bought a 3TB HDD for my dad about a year ago, but I couldn't install Windows 7 64-bit on it as it required EFI/GPT. It's now living its life as a secondary drive. I prefer to use a small system drive anyway. But I didn't know you could go over 2.2TB with MBR (albeit limited to native 4K drives). You mentioned "4TB"; is that the maximum MBR can handle or were you referencing my 4TB drives?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't consider the H61 that much of an upgrade compared to the P55 I have now. The others are used on mATX boards (at least with Asus). I don't plan on overclocking, but I wouldn't mind having the ability to do so should I ever change my mind. At this point, I don't really feel up to patching the kernel (I'm aware of the different possibilities). In fact, I want to move over to XP 64-bit completely if the programs I use allow me to. 32GB of RAM is overkill for me and will be for the foreseeable future, unless I start using fuller/heavier video editing software than the freeware tools I'm using now (Avidemux 2.5 and VirtualDub 1.9.11 mostly). Besides, the plan is to use a different PC running Windows 7 Pro 64-bit (already have the license and DVD) for the video editing stuff so there is nothing left that would require me to have over 16GB on the XP machine. I was running Windows 2000 Pro SP4 for many years, and always ported it over to new systems to avoid reinstallation. Windows 2000 is very forgiving when it comes to this. I had one install going over AMD, nForce4 and various Intel boards without problem until I got the P7H55 I'm using now. After a year of putting up with the occasional freezes and memory-related issues, I needed to reboot after installing a program, but Windows failed to boot with the dreaded "WINNT\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM is missing or corrupt" error message. With Win2K, that's the end because there is no backup like with XP. I tried to install Win2K Pro SP4 fresh onto the second partition of the system drive, but it failed after the first reboot (entering the GUI section of Windows setup) stating a problem with USB. I tried all the settings in the BIOS but nothing helped. Since I needed the computer working again in a few hours, I decided to install WinXP Pro 32-bit fresh onto the second partition, after formatting it. This install went through, but the instabilities remained. I also noticed that the top right corner of the motherboard (on the side of the RAM) is bending upwards, which (I assume) could imply that the heatsink wasn't installed properly. This could also explain why I have to re-seat or wiggle the memory and some of the cards from time to time, especially after tilting the case down to clean it or install/uninstall components. If I don't do this, the computer itself might fail to even run the POST or I get BSODs in Windows. Some of the motherboard expansion card slots don't fully align with the case slots either, which is strange because I have used several boards with this case and never ran into this problem before. The board with CPU and heatsink wasn't preinstalled by me but by a fellow system builder (I used to actively build computers myself up and through the Athlon64 X2 era). But it doesn't serve to point a finger anymore; I've noticed many of the IO ports have become pretty rusty over time, possibly because of the excess humidity where my computer is operating. First, I need to say I'm not a gamer. I don't know where that idea got started, but I'm not. I don't intend to play either. I've worked with Vista/7 32/64-bit and 8/8.1 64-bit extensively and played a little with 10 64-bit. There are currently 5 computers in this house hold and another one in an office space that I'm maintaining. I'm aware of Classic Mode, but I need more: - basic bass and treble controls in the Windows Volume Control panel - that huge button toolbar in Explorer needs to go and replaced with a customizable toolbar featuring only the icons that I need, set to "small icons" - big status bar in Explorer needs to go away if I enable the small status bar - remember sizing and position of all windows, including those that are partially shifted out of view I often run multiple programs (usually 4 to 5) side-by-side so I need as much screen real estate as I can get. I don't want to use a big monitor for tasks other than video editing. Why 2 computers? I don't want the backup to be in the computer that I'll be using 24/7, but I won't be doing high-profile automatic backups either so an external NAS is over the top. A second workstation computer connected to the network is good enough for me. Since I won't be sitting at that computer very often (I can initiate the backups from the source PC), I might as well use modern, high-end components for it and make it a dedicated video editing machine using Win7 Pro 64-bit so I have the option to run more recent professional video editing programs. So I need Win7 (or 8.1 if need be) for some tasks, and XP for other tasks. I want to be able to do all the other tasks WHILE editing video, which I can't do with a dual boot on the same computer. The XP 32-bit / XP 64-bit dual boot I had in mind is intended to allow me to test XP 64-bit in anticipation of a full transition from XP 32-bit. If my XP 64-bit testing won't prove to be the "experience" I had hoped for, I still have XP 32-bit to fall back to. Writing about this now, I realize that I could also just install XP 64-bit from the start (skipping XP 32-bit) as I still have my current PC to fall back to. Sound card, and possibly a capture card. I currently have an Audigy 2 PCI card that I'm very happy with and was thinking of transfering over. I also wondered if it would be useful to upgrade to an X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Champion or a newer Audigy RX, as both are PCIe (and come with XP drivers). What's holding me back there, is that the X-Fi cards have combined Line In/Mic In, and many reviewers complain about not so good sound quality with the Audigy RX (though they never compare it to the Audigy 2). Also, since I have never used any of these cards before (let alone on an XP system), I don't know if their drivers give me the basic bass/treble controls in the Windows Volume Control panel. I was never much of an equalizer guy; it's good for setting a base sound, but it's too much hassle to make a minor temporary adjustment for one song.

Sorry. It seems I wasn't too clear with my question on the 4TB drives. I am aware of the fact that XP 32-bit can't read those. In the XP 32-bit and XP 64-bit dual boot setup I intend to install, I want to (temporarily) connect the two 4TB drives I already own and use them from within XP 64-bit to backup my data on. But I wasn't sure if booting into the XP 32-bit partition would somehow destroy the data on those drives. The word "operations" was perhaps ill-chosen. I was thinking of XP 32-bit trying to mount the 4TB drives when booting up. That's interesting. I'll need to read up on the 4TB / MBR / 4KB sector possibility. There must be a reason HDD manufacturers went 512e before going to true 4K.

I've owned an official copy of XP 64-bit for a few years now, but haven't gotten around to installing it yet. In fact, I have never worked with XP 64-bit before. I would prefer to make the switch, as it (theoretically) offers everything I need: XP "looks", screen real-estate (smaller and customizable toolbars) and support for more RAM and larger HDDs. But I have also read it can be quite problematic getting codecs to work and I am a little scared about not being able to use certain programs anymore. Also, I am still using WMP9 for embedded windows media on my current XP x86 install as the WMP11 plugin for Firefox/Opera can't scale video (known bug). XP 64-bit comes with WMP10 if I'm not mistaken but I don't know if the WMP10 plugin exhibits the same bug. The dual boot I had in mind for the "new old" computer is really just a safety net. I actually had my mind set on installing an unused 150GB WD VelociRaptor I have lying around. The other disks would be at least two of the four 2TB drives I'm currently using. For the sake of completeness, I'll also mention that I already bought a Nanoxia Deep Silence 2 and a Corsair AX760 (without Corsair Link) power supply. I also have two 4TB drives sitting inside another computer in our house hold running Windows 7 64-bit (used by other people), which I'm accessing through the network. I plan on putting them in the new XP machine until I have the money to buy the video editing machine. Incidentally, if I put those 4TB drives into the new XP machine and boot into XP 32-bit, will that destroy the contents of the drives, or will that only happen if I let Windows perform operations on it?

Photoshop :-)

My thought exactly after reading the article by tompsonn. A 64-bit XP would have all the RAM at its disposal, so using a ramdisk would just utilize RAM that was already available to the system. As such, it isn't useful to host a page file in it. However, in the case of a 32-bit XP when used with a ramdisk tool that uses the unused RAM portion, nothing is taken away from the system so I don't see a problem in putting the pagefile in there.

There are some interesting reads online about ramdisk. Gavotte and ImDisk seem worth the try. Too bad I only have 4GiB ATM so I can't test them in depth. I take it you'd rather disable the pagefile than to put it on the ramdisk.

Yeah, things can become a little tricky with the BIOS. I assume that the "Gen3" boards are shipped with a BIOS that supports Ivy Bridge, otherwise there wouldn't be much point in labelling them "Gen3". Still something to watch out for, though; I don't want to buy an extra CPU that I won't be using. Some more digging around the internet seems to confirm your claim that the HD 4000 graphics are probably enough for what I intend to use that computer for. Several sources also claim that the HD 4000 graphics can be roughly compared to an nVidia card with 48 cuda cores. My current GT 610 card also comes with 48 cuda cores so I can always rely on that should the onboard graphics not be sufficient after all. I just realized I also had a question concerning the RAM. I want to use 8GB, but am doubting between 2 sticks of 4GB and 4 sticks of 2GB. If only XP 64-bit was in the frame, I'd go with 2x 4GB; but I also have to consider XP 32-bit. I don't know how a motherboard's memory controller handles the RAM if an OS can't use all of it. If it disables the sticks that are above the memory limit, I'd think that having 4 sticks of 2GB would be better as it will still allow 2 sticks to be used by XP 32-bit; in the case of 2 sticks of 4GB, only one stick would remain. Or isn't that how memory controllers work? If it will just give me a percentage of each stick, then it's probably better to go with 2x 4GB.

I'm looking to upgrade my current computer, which has a motherboard powered by a P55 chipset and the Core i5-650 processor. This computer has been unstable since I had it (system clock running too fast, frequent program freezes and crashes and the occasional memory error dialog), using Windows 2000 and later Windows XP. Memory and hard disk diagnostic tools never found a problem. I have thought about this for a long time, and concluded that it would be best if I split my workload onto two computers instead of one. The first box would be a modern PC running a modern version of Windows, which will be used for video editing and storage (manual backups) exclusively. The second box should be a high-performing "legacy" computer running a dual boot of Windows XP 32-bit and 64-bit, which I will use for basic tasks. Unfortunately, "basic tasks" in this day-and-age have become quite hardware-demanding: H.264 decoding, browsing Facebook, etc. It's this second box I'd like some input on regarding the hardware components that I'd use best. I realize that it's possible to just take a Haswell or Skylake board and use generic drivers, but something tells me I can get better performance using "official" drivers as they are specifically written for individual hardware devices. After some digging around and weighing specs against one another, I have already limited my search to the Z68 and Z77 chipsets, part of the LGA1155 socket range which is the most recent with official support for Windows XP. The Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge CPUs fall into this range. From what I can see, the only real difference of importance to me between the Z68 and Z77 chipsets, is the inclusion of native USB 3.0 by Intel on Z77 boards. Since there are no Windows XP drivers for this, choosing a Z77 setup will limit me to motherboards that have an extra USB 3.0 chip by another manufacturer such as ASMedia. But I don't like the thought of working on a system on which some things don't work normally, or need to be disabled in the BIOS or in Device Manager. Question 1: the native USB 3.0 problem aside, are there any benefits for me to still pick a Z77 motherboard? I already went ahead to find more information on the Z68 chipset, which raises a few more questions. There appear to be two main versions of it: the "standard" version and the "Gen3" version, the latter supporting PCIe 3.0 if used in combination with an Ivy Bridge CPU. Another advantage of Ivy Bridge is that it has improved onboard graphics (Intel HD 4000) compared to the onboard graphics of Sandy Bridge (Intel HD 3000). On the other hand, I have read posts on forums stating that Ivy Bridge CPUs are running hotter than the Sandy Bridge CPUs. Silence is an important factor for me as well. Graphics-wise, I want: - smooth playback of 1080p uncompressed video - hardware-accelerated 1080p H.264 decoding (online videos on Youtube, etc.) - smooth operations on multi-layered PSD images in Photoshop 7 Question 2: would the onboard graphics of the Ivy Bridge CPU (Intel HD 4000) be powerful enough to handle that, or is a discrete graphics card still required? I have also done some digging with respect to graphics cards, as nVidia (my preferred manufacturer) has dropped Windows XP support somewhere along the line as well. The newest supported cards are the 700 series as well as the GTX 950 and 960-based cards. If a separate graphics card is still required, I was thinking of one of the following: - Asus STRIX-GTX750TI-OC-2GD5 (19.6cm ~ 7.71in / 640 CUDA) - Asus STRIX-GTX750TI-DC2OC-4GD5 (19.6cm ~ 7.71in / 640 CUDA) - Asus STRIX-GTX950-DC2OC-2GD5-GAMING (22cm ~ 8.66in / 768 CUDA) - Asus STRIX-GTX950-DC2-2GD5-GAMING (22cm ~ 8.66in / 768 CUDA) - Asus STRIX-GTX960-DC2OC-2GD5 (21.5cm ~ 8.46in / 1024 CUDA) - Asus STRIX-GTX960-DC2-2GD5 (21.5cm ~ 8.46in / 1024 CUDA) I chose Asus STRIX boards because their fans don't spin below a certain point (65°C if I'm not mistaken). All of these are marketed as PCIe 3.0 cards, but I have read on various forums that there is practically no difference with PCIe 2.0 in terms of gaming performance. I don't do games, but does that mean they will still work as spec'd if I put them on a PCIe 2.0 slot on a "standard" Z68 motherboard? I might save some bucks there if "Gen3" boards are more expensive. Lastly, as far as the motherboard goes, I have the following "prerequisites": - 1 PS/2 port for a keyboard - 1 PCI slot, preferably at the bottom - 4 SATAIII 6Gbps ports and 2 SATAII 3Gbps ports (requires additional controller as Z68 only supports 2 SATAIII ports) I'd prefer not to have more than 1 or 2 PCI slots as they are usually positioned in such a way that not all PCIe ports can be utilized in conjunction with the PCI ports. If I will ever need another extension card of any kind, I plan on going PCIe all the way. These are the boards I had in mind: - Asus P8Z68 Deluxe / Gen3 - Asrock Z68 Extreme4 Gen3 The Asus is a bit overkill with the dual LAN and Bluetooth features, but their other boards in the Z68 series don't offer everything I need. Long-term durability is also a concern as the PC will be left turned on 24/7. How can I tell if a motherboard is better or worse equipped for continuous operation? Anyone have any thoughts on this?

My mother tongue is Dutch. I suppose he meant Worthy OSes, but other than that, I can't make much of it either. @kdg: we verstaan niet veel van wat je zegt. Sorry...

You're probably confusing me with killabud. Everything is working on my end. :-)

Perhaps I should've mentioned that I'm using the "YouTube Video and Audio Downloader" (v 0.5.0 now) to give me a clearer view as to what's going on with YouTube videos. With a brand new video, uploaded only minutes ago, firing up the YT Video and Audio Downloader reveals that I can only download H.264 versions of that video. If I wait a couple of hours (sometimes several days), the list will finally include some WEBM variants as well. Sidenote and rant: Most videos will never get all resolutions in the WEBM format. In my experience, a 720p video will be playable and downloadable at 720p in H.264, but WEBM (once made available) will usually be limited to 360p; coming across a WEBM that goes up to 720p or even 1080p is very rare, at least for videos uploaded in the last couple of months. Wasn't Google themselves behind the creation of WEBM? What is downloadable coincides with what is playable in the player. Without the Primetime plugin for Firefox on WinXP, you'll just get an error message for the extend of the period that a video is only made available in H.264 format. I never noticed this problem before the end of July (2017), as I used to force the Flash Player, which can handle all formats.

I suppose brand-new YT videos won't work for you either, then. You can test this easily by performing a YT search on a specific topic and sort the results by date. Then pick one that was uploaded only in the last few hours. Sometimes, though, a new video may still play for you but that's only because YT (for whatever reason) decided to create the WEBM version along with the default H.264 version; normally, it takes several hours to several days before the WEBM version is created. If you right-click the video and choose Stats for nerds, you will see whether it's using video/mp4 or video/webm. This is exactly what I had before installing the Primetime plugin. Now, using FF46 with the Primetime plugin, I'm fed the WEBM versions by default and the H.264 versions if the WEBM variant isn't available yet. Reasons why this may not work for you: 1) There might be a global setting in place that force-disables all plugins except Flash. Do you have other plugins installed, such as Quicktime or RealPlayer? Does content utilizing those plugins work? 2) Something went wrong during the installation procedure. Revise dencorso's latest post before mine, and check that you placed the uncompressed files in the correct profile folder if you have multiple profiles. Has anyone here attempted to install this clean on Firefox 52.x, or was Firefox updated to 52.x *after* installation of the Primetime plugin?

Up until a few days ago, I was running Firefox 34.0.5 with per-site spoofing (youtube.com and google.com) as FF43 to get rid of YouTube's nagging of using an outdated browser. Now, using Firefox 46.0.1, I'm still using the same spoofing ("spoofing down"?) but it's to get back the "older" YouTube layout. With FF34, I was used to browsing YT with zoom set 3x larger because I find the thumbnails and videos too small using the default zoom level. With FF46, the YT video size is somewhat locked to "full width" (I can't size it), and using the x3 zoom level, the comments section that normally displays below a video drops all the way to the bottom to make way for a squished-in Related Videos section. In order to get the Comments and Related Videos sections displayed side by side again, I need to unzoom a little but that turns the thumbnails too small again. By spoofing as FF43, YT will provide FF the older layout which is more flexible. Note: I haven't tested which FF version is the exact turning point for YT to switch to the new layout. It could be 44 or 45. I have these add-ons installed to spoof the UA on a per-site basis: User-Agent JS Fixer 1.3.1-signed.1-signed UAControl 0.1.3.1.1-signed.1-signed If you go to Add-ons > Extensions and click Options next to the UAControl entry, you can enter your own custom sites and user agents. I use the following for both www.google.com and www.youtube.com: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:43.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/43.0 YouTube also seems to be using a different global font using newer versions of Firefox which I find harder to read. Spoofing as FF43 doesn't change it back, so I use "user CSS" to work around this. If you want to know how to do it: In FF's profile folder, create a new folder called "chrome". In there, create a new text file named userContent.css (no .txt at the end) and put this code inside: @-moz-document domain(youtube.com){ *{font-family:Arial !important} } You need to restart Firefox after each change as it won't use new additions on the fly like Opera 12 and earlier did.

The three hotfixes Destro mentioned in "Step 7" won't install if SP3 for the Compatibility Pack is not installed first. This seems logical, seeing those are post-SP3 fixes. What I did was: 1) install SP3 for the Compatibility Pack and verified that Microsoft Update was broken again 2) install the three hotfixes (KB3127894, KB3203438 and KB3191897) manually Now Microsoft Update is working fine. So I guess the conclusion is that SP3 for the Office 2007 Compatibility Pack exhibits the same problem IE is suffering from: you need to install the latest update(s) manually. Pfff... ;-P

@mixit Just want to say that the instructions in the OP worked right away for me on a computer running Windows XP and Firefox 46.0.2. So I'll just have to find a way to install FF 46 or newer on my main computer. Thanks! Edit: I finally got around to creating a second (clean) install of FF on my main rig starting off with FF35 using a separate profile and worked it up gradually until version 46. The instructions in the OP worked like a charm!

I haven't finished my testing yet, but here are a few observations. Having the Office Compatibility Pack (fileformatconverters.exe) installed, approximately doubles the amount of time Microsoft Update needs to search for updates (about 2 minutes total), but it runs through. Installing SP3 for the Compatibility Pack borks Microsoft Update. Uninstalling SP3 fixes Microsoft Update again. I CANNOT confirm that uninstalling SP3 for the Compatibility Pack also removes the entry for the main Office Compatibility Pack in Control Panel>Software; the entry is still there as expected. Also, when visiting Microsoft Update after uninstalling SP3 for the Compatibility Pack, I do not get updates for the Compatibility Pack other than the SP3. The only other updates I'm offered are for Word Viewer, Excel Viewer and Powerpoint Viewer. I guess I'm not supposed to install these (to fix Microsoft Update), so I'll just move on to Step 7 in Destro's guidelines.