Dave-H

Just added the registry entry on my other Windows XP computer, and Microsoft Update is now offering me four critical updates. KB2932079 (.NET 2.0), KB2926765 (Security update for WEPOS and POSReady), KB2931365 (.NET 4), and KB2953522 (Security Update for IE8). Can someone who's done it reassure me that these are all OK to install?

So do I understand this right? We can get automatic Microsoft updates for our Windows XP systems for the next five years just by adding one simple registry entry, and everything that harkaz and others have been doing towards this has actually been a complete and unnecessary waste of time and effort?! I have to say that it does sound just a bit too good to be true!

Just to report that I have substituted the later version 12.9.5.2 symevent files on my system, with no apparent ill effects. The s32evnt1.dll file, which is also part of the package, is still the earlier 12.8.6.38 version. Thanks, harkaz!

Thanks, that would be much appreciated! They are 32 bit system files I assume? What about s32evnt1.dll, which is also part of it? Cheers, Dave.

Thanks Den! It sounds like I have the latest version of symevent for my 32 bit system then. Just as well I didn't waste ages trying to find a later version. In fact I was thinking of just pinching the later version files from a friend's laptop, which has Norton 360 installed. Just as well I didn't as it's a 64 bit laptop!

Yes, I'd be interested to know as well where that later version of symevent that you mention came from. The latest version on the Symantec FTP site is 12.8.6.38, which I installed thanks to submix8c. If there is a later one I would want to install that of course, assuming that it is compatible with XP! A search for version 12.9.5.2 doesn't find any downloads available for it.

Easiest way is to right click on "My Computer" on the desktop, select "Manage" and you should see the Event Viewer in the console window that pops up.

Strange that they don't appear in your Windows Update history. If you look in your Windows System Event Log however, they should be listed there with the source "NtServicePack".

Thanks den, yes I said earlier that I was a bit suspicious of the .NET optimisation service, which would almost certainly have caused the disk activity and the sluggish startup with the firewall error. I've seen that happen before after .NET updates. submix8c said he always disables it after any updates, but I guess it's there for a reason, and its impact on the system is only temporary. Just on this occasion, it may have generated the first crash, which may in turn have caused the second. Chkdsk ran after both crashes as you would expect, and although it didn't record fixing anything apart from the usual few truncated and cross-linked files that you always get after a stop error, it may have sorted it out. Still keeping my fingers crossed! I have updated Symevent BTW. Cheers, Dave.

Thanks guys! Touch wood, the machine seems to be running fine again now. I will certainly do the memory test if I get any more problems, but I would be very surprised indeed if it was failing RAM that caused the issue. It would be an amazing coincidence if it happened at the exact time that I installed those patches! It is odd that the patches all appeared to install with no errors, and then a sudden spontaneous BSOD occurred quite a while later after a successful reboot. I wasn't even actually using the machine when the first stop error happened, although there had been a lot of disk activity up to the point at which it crashed. I didn't see what the machine was doing when the second stop error occurred as I wasn't with it when it happened.

Thanks harkaz! I'm not sure how many people do have Norton/Symantec system utility software installed nowadays, but Norton Anti-Virus is certainly still quite commonly used. If you think there is a conflict here, and it can be fixed, that's great. Thank you very much indeed for all you're doing to keep Windows XP safe and alive! Cheers, Dave.

Hmm, sounds like these updates would be more safely installed in Safe Mode! Will they install in Safe Mode, I've never tried? I know the .NET updates need the Windows Installer, which I think won't work in Safe Mode, but how about the others?

Thanks! My version of SYMEVENT is 12.5.4.2, and the version on the FTP site is 12.8.6.38. I will update it. Even if it didn't cause the problem, and I've no reason to think that it has ever caused a similar issue before, it's always worth having the latest version. Cheers, Dave.

Well I do have Norton Utilities installed on the system (Norton Utilities 2002 in fact, the last one before you had to buy the whole suite including the AV!) so that explains the presence of symevent.sys. I also have Norton Crashguard and Norton CleanSweep. I know many people have no time for these programs, but they have worked well for me over the years. I've checked my BlueScreenView history (a great program BTW, which I've had installed for years!) and there are no previous incidents caused by symevent.sys recorded, but there are four stop errors recording symmonnt.sys as the cause. The last two were back in January of this year, the other two back in July 2012. It could be that there was some interaction which went on here which caused the system to fall over, but it's never done that after a Windows Update session before.

OK, here they are! I've given them a dummy .txt extension so the forum will let me upload them. I hope they give some clue as to what happened! Cheers, Dave. Mini051614-01.dmp.txt Mini051614-02.dmp.txt

Thanks, I think I will be a bit more wary next month! Touching wood, the machine seems to be stable again now. Whatever caused the BSODs seems to have cleared itself. I'm wondering if it was the .NET optimisation service, that runs after any .NET updates, that caused the crashes. It seems to have done its job now, and isn't running any more. The only other symptom I was getting was that the startup seemed to be slow (after the desktop loaded) and I was getting pop-up error messages that the Firewall wasn't running. This cleared eventually, and the startup now seems to be normal again. I've had this before after updates, so it may or may not be relevant.

I installed five of harkaz's modified updates yesterday. KB2953522 (IE8), KB2932079 (.NET 2.0), KB2931365 (.NET 4.0), KB2931352 (.NET security update), and KB2926765 (XP security update). All seemed well, but a while after the updates were installed, the machine suddenly blue screened. The stop error was 0x0000004E, PFN_LIST_CORRUPT, apparently thrown by ntoskrnl.exe. On restart, the machine seemed OK again. However this morning, after booting up and leaving it for a while, I found it with another BSOD. This time the stop error 0x00000044, MULTIPLE_IRP_COMPLETE_REQUESTS. Any ideas? I am a bit suspicious of KB2931352, as that seemed to replace a lot of .NET files, including some that were from ten years ago!

I must say I was surprised to find the Malicious Software Removal Tool being offered to me by Windows Update this morning! I wonder too if that will be an ongoing thing. I suppose it depends on how different the tool is on later versions of Windows. If it's the same for all Windows versions I can see no reason not to carry on offering it to XP users, if it isn't I suspect this will quickly stop as they're not going to carry on producing a special version just for XP.

Exactly the same thing happened on my machine with the root certificates apparently rolling back to an older version. Puzzled me too, glad I wasn't the only one! Presumably root certificate updates have now ended for XP along with everything else, but what about the updates that the OS does regularly automatically, which seem to happen regardless of whether automatic updating is enabled in Windows Update? I mean the "crypt32" entries that appear in the Windows Application log - "Successful auto update retrieval of third-party root list sequence number from: <http://www.download.windowsupdate.com/msdownload/update/v3/static/trustedr/en/authrootseq.txt>" and "Successful auto update retrieval of third-party root list cab from: <http://www.download.windowsupdate.com/msdownload/update/v3/static/trustedr/en/authrootstl.cab>" Will they now end as well, and will the OS constantly throw error messages into the log because it can't find the update?

Thanks!

Were the patches that were rolled out by Microsoft this week the last ones for Windows XP, or will there actually be another set on April 8th, which is the second Tuesday of the month?

Really pleased to see this, now I can keep my Windows XP installation alive as I have my Windows 98SE installation thanks to the great experts here! I really hope that this will be an ongoing project where at least some post XP EOS hotfixes from later versions of Windows can be integrated into XP installations.

I had an update on my Technet forum thread posted by Bruno at MS this morning, and he says someone at MS has checked and the links are working. I've just checked, and now they are! The thread is here. They seem to be saying that they should always have been working and it was probably a temporary fault, but if it was it lasted for many many weeks! I would like to think that they've seen they were wrong and have just quietly updated them, which is a good result if it's true! Cheers, Dave.

@GrofLuigi Thanks very much for that, at least it will be a useful fall-back to make the links meaningful again if MS don't get their own links working again in XP! BTW I tried the equivalent links on a friend's Windows 7 machine, and they do work there, going to the newly formatted pages on Technet. @jaclaz Yes, some of the suggestions were next to useless, but that always seems to be the case with generic help files, wherever they're from.

Well sometimes they did indeed just go to a page which said that no further information was available, but they did often take you to a page which explained what the error message was about and suggest solutions. Obviously a web search on the error would do the job just as well, maybe better, but I still think that this facility should work if it's still being offered to the user, at least until all the relevant information about XP is removed from Microsoft's servers, which I hope won't happen for many years yet!