Dave-H

The error message comes up after I've apparently successfully logged in, when I dismiss it the page refreshes and the error message just comes back. I am still logged in as far as I can tell, I sometimes see a flash of my conversations page, and then it freezes and the error message comes back again. Could you share the user agent string that is working for you? I have the Custom UserAgent String add-on, so I can easily try it. Thanks, Dave.

Skype Web seems to have stopped working for me in Firefox 52.9ESR, I'm just getting "a problem has occurred, please press OK to reload", which just goes round and round in circles. Is there a user agent string that will still work, or is that it, Skype is dead on XP?

Does their MSI installer work on Windows XP?

I did look into PAE some time ago, but backed off as it looked like a bit of a minefield! If it was just a matter of changing a setting I would do it of course, but IIRC it was quite a bit more complex than that. Off topic here of course, but I will now have another look at it. I'll be interested to see if temporarily disabling ABP helps with your Firefox stability in the first minutes after starting it. You don't need to uninstall it, just disabling it is enough. I've just been putting up with it as a minor annoyance. After a few minutes Firefox is perfectly fine for me until it's restarted, it just freezes and unfreezes two or three times in the first couple of minutes of use.

Do you have Adblock Plus installed? I've noticed that Firefox 52.9ESR freezes and unfreezes several times soon after opening it, and after that it's fine. If that's what you're seeing, disabling Adblock Plus fixes it. Why it's doing it I have no idea, but it might well be related to ABP checking for filter list updates, I have dom.ipc.processCount set to 4. Do you think it would be worth setting it to 8? I have 8GB of physical RAM installed, but I run Firefox 52.9ESR on a 32 bit Windows XP system, so can only access 3GB of course.

Thanks @egrabrych! Now updated.

Thanks, that's pretty much what I thought! I think I was very lucky to find an HD Audio driver that would work in Windows 98, I thought DOS would be pushing it!

I mean raw DOS mode, without going via Windows. What you get if you select "command prompt" from the Windows 98 F8 startup menu, or "restart in DOS mode" from the Windows 98 shutdown menu.

Thanks, I thought that would be the case, but I thought I'd ask just in case! I guess there is no way to get sound in DOS games in DOS mode with the audio hardware that I have now.

@deomsh Sorry to bump this thread for an off topic question, but does the Windows 3.1 HD Audio driver I've now got installed on Windows 98 also work in DOS? A big ask I'm sure, but just wondering! I'd like to have sound in old games running in DOS mode if it's at all possible. If it's a "no" as I suspect it will be, no problem! Thanks, Dave.

@rloew I had a look at your site, but I couldn't immediately identify the program concerned. Which one is it?

Yes, that's the only way to get some of them now.

I've now been offered Java 8 Update 221 on Windows XP. Still no sign of Java 8 Update 222.

I can certainly recommend HP System Diagnostics, I've been using it for years after it came bundled with the software for an HP photo printer I bought. I use it on Windows 98SE and Windows XP.

You can't change it in Disk Management? I'm not sure if you can change the letter of the system drive there.

I've been offered Java 8 Update 221 on Windows 10. No offered update on XP as yet, but when I checked the offline installers download page, there is only version 221, no version 222. Have they stopped offering dual versions like they used to, I can find no trace of 222 anywhere?

You're right, without HTTPSProxy running, it will not display.

Working fine here, but I have ProxHTTPSProxy installed, which may well be making the difference.

I'm a bit surprised, with supposedly less than a week to go before it stops working, that they haven't put any notice on the Microsoft Update website that it's about to be pulled. Perhaps they think no-one's using it any more anyway, although I'm sure their traffic data analysis would tell them otherwise if they bothered to look!

Three updates today, all seem to be safe. I wonder if these will be the last I see from Microsoft Update?

I found with Office 2010 that activation didn't work online when it was installed on Windows XP, but it did on Windows 10. However, I found that it was still possible to activate it on XP over the phone, despite the activation notice saying that facility was no longer available either. Are you seeing an installation ID of nine blocks of six numbers on the activation screen? If so, you should be able to ring the MS activation line and input those numbers and get an activation code back. It's an automated system, you don't actually speak to anyone. It may not work with Office 2007 of course, but worth a try. It's a very tedious process, but hopefully you'll only have to do it once!

I'm afraid I can't help you on that, as I use Malwarebytes Premium online, so it updates automatically. I guess you'll have more luck asking about this on the Malwarebytes forum.

And all for a readily available patch that's been around since the middle of May!

Looks to me like that hotfix (and therefore almost certainly others as well) are now only available to paying customers!

He presumably doesn't really understand the concept of "open source"!