Dave-H

Well my netbook is a pretty feeble machine, and Avast free doesn't seem to cripple it! Malwarebytes is good by reputation for being light on resources, and again there is a legacy XP compatible version (3.5.1) which I'm using on my main machine as I couldn't get Avast to work there. The snag with MB is that the free version only does on demand manual scanning, not real-time scanning, if you want real-time protection you have to pay for a subscription.

I'm using the last version of Avast Free AV for XP (18.8.2356) on my netbook. There are some XP systems it won't work on for some undiagnosed reason, it won't work on my main machine, but on the netbook it's fine. Avast say it will continue to get definition updates for the foreseeable future. I did try Panda on my main machine a year or so ago, and it did have some problems, although again there is still supposed to be a legacy XP compatible version. Basically, I suspect that either of them would work for you unless you're unlucky like I was. Just try the free versions. If they don't work properly, just uninstall them and try something else!

The end of being able to use one (arguably not very good anyway) Microsoft Security program is hardy the end of the world when so many alternatives still exist!

Thanks! I wasn't aware of that. However, it seems to be a slipstreamer just for an install of Office XP SP3, not for the Office 2007 Compatibility Pack add-on, unless I'm misunderstanding things.

Sorry, what is the "Office Integrator"?

Thanks @actinium, and sorry for the delay in replying, I've only just got back from my holiday. Trying the SP1 and SP2 updates would be good, but what I can't understand is why it's stopped working in the first place, I'm sure it was fine when it was first installed, but now it won't open any docx files at all, just saying it's a "pre-release version".

@heinoganda Just tried this, and with HTTPSProxy enabled 100 items were checked and all but two failed! Tried again with HTTPSProxy disabled, and 100 were checked and all were OK or NA. Is that expected behaviour? EDIT: Should have read the first post more carefully! "It will detect obvious cases (such as interception by a local proxy......"

Seems to be. Have a look here.

I tried out Panda, AVG and Avast (the last two are pretty much the same) and they all have versions for Windows XP which will not have any more program updates, but will receive definition updates for the foreseeable future. I couldn't get Avast to work on my main machine, but it works fine on my netbook. Apparently some XP systems won't work with it, the cause seems to be unknown! The free version has replaced MSE on my netbook. I'm using Malwarebytes 3.5.1 on the XP side of my main machine, and that works fine. This also should continue to receive definition updates, but the free version doesn't include realtime scanning. It's annoying to use two different systems on my two XP installations, but as I said Avast wouldn't work on my main machine, and installing the full version of Malwarebytes on my netbook would have cost extra, as the basic fee (to get real time scanning) only covers one machine.

@jumper I take it no more progress with this? I would love to think that using the Bugscreen plugin would potentially be an answer to this, if it can be modified to remove the content that is causing the display delay, but doing that is way out of my league I'm afraid. Cheers, Dave.

Thanks @heinoganda, understood. I guess I can remove the POSReady key, as there is probably no point in it being there any more anyway, but what i will look into is perhaps just suppressing those messages in the logs so they're not recorded any more. I did that on my Windows 10 installation to stop the annoying error messages that were being written to the log on every boot, which have plagued Windows 10 for ages, and Microsoft says to ignore! I'm not sure if you can do it in Windows XP, but I will look into it. Cheers, Dave.

I just tried running my netbook XP installation for the first time in several days, and left it for a while before running the MSE updater. When I looked just before running it, still loads of new error messages in the Windows logs, so MSE is obviously still trying to update itself, and failing. If I had run the updater as soon as I booted into XP would these errors not have happened? If so I will try setting up a scheduled task to run it automatically on boot.

Thanks @actinium! I just tried to open a docx Word file in Office XP on Windows 98SE, and it failed! I'm now just getting an error message which says - "This is a pre-release version of the Compatibility Pack and can only open pre-release Office 2007 files only. Do you want to check for a newer version of the Compatibility Pack?" If I press "Cancel" nothing happens, and if I press "OK" it opens Internet Explorer 6 (!) with a "not-found" page. This is really odd, because I'm sure it used to work! I've tried repairing the installation and uninstalling and re-installing, but the same result. I'm sure it will no longer open files that it used to open, so I don't know what's changed. I did try that Windows 2000 version of the installer you kindly linked me to, but it doesn't work in any KernelEx mode that I tried. It gets past the licence agreement with KernelEx, but then just says the installation failed. I might try extracting the files from it and if there's an msi file and associated cab file in there and try that. It was an msi file I used for the original install, which does still install fine but now no longer actually works. If it now needs SP3 of the Pack I guess I'm stuck, because I never got that to install at all, but it did seem happy without it until now.

Thanks, I will give it a try and let you know how it goes! I'm about to go away on holiday until the beginning of next month, and I will try it when I get back home. Cheers, Dave.

Well if you have a version that would work properly on Windows 98SE it would be great if you could upload it! The version I've got (the later one 12.0.6500.5000, 38.808.920) did actually install on Windows 98, but not properly. It will read later .docx Word documents (which is all I actually need it for) but won't open later Excel or PowerPoint files. It also can't be updated to SP3 or have any of the later patches installed, but I guess that's probably an intrinsic problem.

I downloaded the files OK using Firefox 52.9 ESR. 🤔

The Microsoft link to the Format Converters file indeed doesn't work, but that file and all the others are in the packages @actinium has pointed to in the second post of the thread.

We know! Read from here.

Sorry again for the late response @actinium. Yes, it was indeed a .rar file, sorry for the confusion. I actually repackaged it as a zip file myself! The Office 2007 Compatibility Pack.rar file wouldn't actually open with my old copy of WinRAR, it said it was corrupted, but it does open with 7-Zip. Thanks very much again!

@Mathwiz @DrWho3000 The Compatibility Pack should work with just a base install, but there is a SP3 update for it (KB2526297) plus many other subsequent security patches. See this thread where @actinium has kindly given links to a repository of all the necessary files to install the pack, both for installation and updates until EOS. As an off-topic aside, I never managed to get the Windows 98 installation beyond base level, SP3 would not install on Windows 98.

Good luck! The Office 2007 Compatibility Pack doesn't officially work on Windows 98, but I did get it to install, and it will allow you to read (I don't know about write) .docx Word documents in Windows 98. There's a bigger problem with newer Excel and PowerPoint files unfortunately.

I assume you mean it's opening a window when you start the system. Explorer always starts with Windows, it generates the taskbar, so it will always be present in Task Manager, but it shouldn't show any open windows. What window is it opening?

Ah, if you never actually manually installed Shockwave, that would explain why you don't have that folder. I'm not sure when Macromedia was taken over by Adobe, but I would be surprised if it was before 2001 when XP was first released. I assume Adobe have always kept the Flash installation folder named Macromedia for backwards compatibility, in the same way that some of the Java folders are still named "Sun" many years after they were taken over by Oracle.

Yes, there's a whole thread about it here!

The Shockwave files should be in the \System32\Adobe folder. Mine are all still there.