Dave-H

I have both those entries in my Add/Remove Programs. Searching for the winusb.dll file brings up the same version (6.1.7600.16385) in system32, but there are copies of the file in two other folders relating to connectivity software for mobile phones, both my old Nokia phone and my current Samsung phone. The copy in the Samsung folder is older (6.0.6000.16386), the one in the Nokia folder is the same as the one in system32. If you have similar software installed that may well be where it came from.

It seems to be very erratic for me. I've had quite a few e-mail notifications during the last few days, but before that it seems I wasn't getting them as I checked to see if there were any responses to a post I'd made, and there were several which I hadn't been notified about! You don't get a notification for every post anyway, only for the first one since you last visited, but even that did not seem to have happened. Touch wood it's OK at the moment though, at least for me.

Thanks, so I guess switching off the automatic updating system and just using the manual updater when prompted (or on a regular schedule) is the answer. I'm actually quite relieved that this does not seem to be a problem just on my systems, and is actually yet another problem caused by Microsoft's flaky updates! Actually I've always been surprised that we're getting the automatic updates at all, but I assume this is for the benefit of "real" POSReady systems, which are still supported. If enough people with them complain about the endlessly logged errors, perhaps it will get fixed, but I'm not holding my breath!

Bizarrely, when I download authrootstl.cab now, its contents are dated 21st August 2018, which I don't understand at all! Still doesn't work though. Well if, as you say, the automatic crypt32 updates do exactly the same thing as @heinoganda's manual updater does, there is no point in using both. I guess as you say that what MS is serving through the automatic system is now just very out of date, and therefore throwing errors. Strange though that the automatic update system is still trying to do updates when the manual updater has been run, so the latest certificates should already be there! Were it not that this is presumably happening on "genuine" POSReady systems as well as hacked XP systems, I would say that it was something that won't be fixed, but if it's happening on supported system, it should be fixed! Mind you, look at how long it took them to fix the forever scanning Windows Update issue..........

Thanks, yes I was aware of the option to disable the function, although it probably hadn't been specifically mentioned in the thread. I was hoping to fix the problem though of course, rather than just working around it by disabling the function! If it proves to be a function that fundamentally no longer works on XP, I will switch it off of course, but I haven't quite yet given up on finding a fix!

Thanks, I'll look into that!

Thanks as always @heinoganda! I have run your batch file before, and done manual cleaning too, but clearing the certificate caches and deleting the certificates themselves only seems to work for a short time, and then the errors just come back again. I really don't want to get into effectively creating a new XP system to test whether this occurs again with that, it's a lot of trouble with no guarantee that it would reveal the source of the problem. It's happening on two completely independent XP installations on two machines, which would seem to indicate to me that it's pretty ubiquitous, even if not everyone seems to be seeing the errors. Fundamentally, it looks as if Windows Update is serving an out of date file to the system, which is throwing error messages because there are a lot of expired certificates in it. Deleting the expired certificates will not do any good of course, as they will just be downloaded again! Presumably there is an up to date version of the file being served to later versions of Windows, but I don't know what address it's coming from. If it was possible to find that out, it might be possible to change the Windows Update download address so XP and POSReady systems get the current version.

Well I've just manually downloaded authrootstl.cab and extracted the authroot.stl file from it. Looking at its contents, it dates from 22nd September 2017, so it's nearly a year old, and it contains a lot of long expired certificates! Why is Windows Update serving such an old version, and is it possible to change it to download the current version, even if it's not intended for XP systems? Presumably this problem must be happening on genuine POSReady systems?

Good, well that's three of us at least with the same issue! I'm sure he will correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think running or not running Heinoganda's certificate updater has anything to do with these errors, as I think that updates something different to what the crypt32 updates are. As those crypt32 automatic updates are still happening, and were for ages after XP EOL before the errors started, they must be something different to what the certificate updater is designed to update, which is presumably something now no longer updated automatically by the OS. As I said, I've never run the certificate updater on my netbook, or done any other manual updates or alterations to any of the certificates system on that machine, and the errors have started there too, although they did take a lot longer to start appearing there than they did on my main machine for some reason.

A good thought, but I don't have Eudora installed on my netbook, so it can't be that!

Well my purging of the certificates on my machine didn't work. In fact I'm now getting so many errors on every boot that they're being suppressed to avoid swamping the log! I'm still really surprised that no-one else seems to be having this problem, as it's happening exactly the same on my netbook too, which has never had any changes made to its certificate system, it hasn't even had any manual updates applied using @heinoganda's updater or by any other means!

Yes, good to have the system working properly again finally, but why on earth did it take so long to do anything about it?! I fixed my .NET update problem by installing .NET 4 Extended, problem solved! Quite why I would need it I've no idea, but I have got it on my main machine anyway, I obviously never bothered with it on my netbook. I will have a look at that page Den mentioned. 🙂

Sorry for the delay in responding, I don't seem to be getting any e-mail notifications of replies again. Yes, I only have Client Profile installed on the machine with the problem, so that would certainly explain it!

Yes, I had to do that too! I also can't install KB4457046. It throws error 0x66A every time on Microsoft Update, and when I try the standalone installer, I get "KB4457046 does not apply, or is blocked by another condition on your computer." Anyone any ideas about that? I can't find any reference online to that specific problem. The other .NET 4.0 update installed fine.

Great, glad it worked for you, and I assume you have sound now too? I guess from what you're saying that you've done it as a global UA string. I did that for quite a while, but I then found one day that I couldn't log in to the British Airways website, and after a lot of head scratching I found it was due to having that string set, so I reverted the global setting back to default and used the add-on to just change the string for Facebook. Do bear that in mind if you get problems with any other sites. Cheers, Dave.

In that case you need to change the UserAgent that's being sent to Facebook. I use an add-on called "User-Agent Switcher" but there are many others out there. I would use one that will allow switching on a site-by-site basis, not a global change (which can be done within Firefox natively anyway in the about:config page). I found that caused issues on some other sites. Try using this UA string - Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:57.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/57.0 With a bit of luck that will then make Facebook use HTML5, which may hopefully cure your sound problem too! The "Windows NT 6.1" bit is important, as Facebook must not be allowed to know you're using Windows XP, or it will serve Flash videos whatever version of the browser you say you're using! This tells it you're using Windows 7 of course. BTW I haven't turned off Firefox updating as I want to know if they do release an out of support update if there's a very severe security problem. I don't think it will affect the notice as the implication was that it was a once-only appearance anyway.

If you right click on a video, if it's using Flash you will see the Flash plugin menu. If it's using HTML5 you will see "Pause, Unmute, Show video URL, and Copy video URL at current time".

I was just glad to see "You will not see this again"! If it was going to pop up every time I used Firefox 52 ESR from now on I would not have been amused!

Perhaps I'm lucky, but my hardware seems to support OK Windows 98SE, Windows XP, and Windows 10 x64! I've no reason to change it anytime soon.

Are the videos definitely using HTML5, and not Flash? You do need to spoof the UserAgent to get Facebook to use HTML5 now. I use an add-on for that.

Boooooooooooooo!

Well I deleted all the files in the certificate cache folders, and cleaned the registry of all the system certificate entries. There were then no certificates recorded as being installed on the machine at all. On reboot a new lot were downloaded, with no error messages, and I then ran the Certificate Updater to get the rest of them restored. So far, so good, I guess I won't know until the next automatic update whether this has finally laid this problem to rest. From past experience, I'm not holding out a lot of hope!

Actually I've always found that MS Update scans fine as long as there is no update for IE8 pending. It suddenly falls over on Patch Tuesday when that monthly update is rolled out. If you run it any other time it's OK.

You should only need to install the IE8 Cumulative Update to avoid this, but I thought that problem was supposed to be fixed now anyway? I guess we'll find out on the 11th.

And now it's back to as it was before! So the clearing of the caches is obviously not the answer! Somewhere there is an expired certificate that is presumably causing this, but I don't seem to have been able to identify it to remove it and/or update it. It can't be an intrinsic problem with Windows XP, or everyone would be reporting it! I think what I'm going to have to do is to completely reset the certificates system on my machine and delete them all and start from scratch again. Has anyone any input on the safest way of doing this? Thanks, Dave.