Dave-H

Boo! I've been using that for years, it's incredibly useful if you do a lot of work with videos from many different sources, especially with its Explorer integration. It hasn't been updated that often recently though, it used to be updated at least every month, so I guess they're not finding much to add to it now so the last XP version won't become problematic anytime soon.

It still works fine in IE8 with ProxHTTPSProxy installed too of course!

There are instructions for patching the XP files if you have access to a Windows 7-10 machine. Basically, patch the files on that machine and then copy the patched versions back to the XP machine!

Ah OK, just thought I'd mention it as an option!

Have you tried using the Flash files with the time bomb removed? They're still working fine for normal browser Flash operations, and running Flash screen savers. How they would work with a piece of software which relies on Flash outside the browser I don't know, but I imagine they would.

Yes Vista is mentioned in the thread title, because it's a thread about the cessation of the Windows Update services, which happens to apply to both XP and Vista, which is why it's mentioned. However posts about problems which are specific to Vista alone should of course be in the Vista section.

Well posts about Windows Vista should not be in this section of the forum anyway! You contribution was obviously valuable @Dixel, and if you want to please make a new thread in the Vista section of the forum outlining your fix and stating what problems it should resolve. We will look at pinning it, and moving the relevant posts from this thread to it. AFAIK liking or upvoting posts does not give them any more prominence here, and while you are quite free to ask people to upvote your posts, others are quite entitled to disapprove of this! Cheers, Dave.

Using WSUS?

A solution was found, in the other thread.

This is what I use as a replacement for Task Manager. It has pretty comprehensive process killing functions, which I've never known to fail.

Do we know how many of those tools still work on XP? I would be very surprised if they all do!

Posts moved to a new thread.

Mention of warez is forbidden here under forum rules.

Thanks to @FantasyAcquiescetoo in that case!

Well I've had a quick look, and needless to say I found no definitive answer about dual antennas! I found one reference which declared that the main is for 2.4GHz wi-fi, and the aux is for 5GHz wi-fi, but I don't actually think that's correct. Most others said that using two antennas just gives better performance, and the module uses the one with the best signal. It does seem that the card will work perfectly happily on wi-fi and Bluetooth with only one antenna connected, so I don't think that having only one antenna is causing your Bluetooth issue.

Thank you.

I added a second antenna to my netbook, which actually was designed for a full-sized laptop, so the wire was far too long! It's marked as an "aux" antenna, but what the physical difference is between a "main" antenna and an "aux" antenna I have no idea, they look pretty identical to me. I don't think that the main antenna is for wi-fi and the aux antenna is for bluetooth, AFAIK. Both should work just with one antenna connected I would have thought, although probably with reduced transmit and receive power. I'll do a bit more research on this.

The last XP compatible MSO.DLL is version 14.0.7214.5000, which was included in update KB4092483. The most recent incompatible MSO.DLL is in KB4504703, and is version 14.0.7266.5000. HTH.

I guess that the really cheap keys that are being sold for Windows are like the ones being sold for Office. IIRC they are OEM multiple use keys, and I read that it was ruled in court that selling them was perfectly legal, much to Microsoft's annoyance I'm sure! Doesn't explain why a Windows 8.1 key should unlock Windows 10 though!

I had my Windows 10 system in a sort of half and half mode between using a local account and using a Microsoft account. Somehow I managed to lose this, and it took me a very long time to find how to restore it back again! I'm just putting the answer here in case anyone wants to use it, and to remind myself how to do it if I have to do it again in future! The advantage of how I have Windows 10 set up, at least for me, is that as Windows is fundamentally still logged on with a local account, I can use any user name I like, in my case just "Dave". You cannot do this with a Microsoft account as you can't have a singe word user name. Also, I can set it to log in automatically when I boot up, something that as far as I know you can't do when logged in with a Microsoft account. The mode I was using allows all this, but the system still looks as if it is logged in with a Microsoft account. The banner on the settings home page looks right, all the Microsoft apps log in automatically and even the sync system works, all still with a local account. The way you do it is to make sure firstly that you are logged in with a local account, then you need to log out of all Microsoft apps like Cortana and Edge. Go to the accounts settings page and remove any Microsoft accounts listed there. Then go to the Microsoft Store app, and if necessary log out of that too. Count to ten, then log back into the Store app again. When the login dialogue runs, ignore the "Microsoft Apps Only" link, and carry on logging in normally. If you do this in many places, it starts the procedure to switch the whole of Windows over to using a Microsoft account to log in for the future, but for some reason the Windows Store login does not do that, however once you've logged in there you will find that your Microsoft account has appeared in the "accounts used by other apps" area of the accounts setting page, and all Microsoft apps (except strangely in my case, the Photos app) will log in automatically when you run them. You should now be able to enable sync too if you want to use it, which is normally impossible with a local account. If you want to return to normal, simply click on the link to stop Microsoft apps logging in automatically on the "your info" settings page. This should return you to a normal local account setup. I hope this might be useful for people, and sorry if it's already common knowledge! As I said it took me a lot of digging to find out how to configure it manually at will. Cheers, Dave.

You normally have to have at least one administrative account on the machine AFAIK. Presumably you can't just change your account to an admistrator account in Control Panel>User Accounts? If you go to Computer Management>System Tools>Local Users and Groups>Users is the default admin account listed there? If it is, right click on it, select Properties, and check that it's not disabled. If it is, enable it.

Yes, it is very odd indeed! The first two updates I got from the WSUS system worked fine, and were added to my history. The last one, which was an update for Office 2010, installed fine, but when I checked after it had installed, my whole history had been wiped, and only that update was listed! Ever since then, any attempt at an update check has resulted in the history being wiped again after being restored from a backup which includes the first two updates, but not the third one which seemed to trigger the problem.

It hasn't been possible to use the IE8 Microsoft Update or Windows Update interface for quite some time AFAIK, it just starts scanning and immediately fails, although it will still show you your installed updates history. I have been using WUMT, but even if that wasn't run, a background automatic update check seemed to be enough to wipe my history, which usually happened a short time after a boot.

Just a quick update on my situation. It looks as if the act of checking for updates using the WSUS server is causing my existing updates history to be wiped. Could this be because the old updates are not considered compatible or something? Anyway, I have now switched automatic updates off completely, and so far my history has stayed intact.

OK, I'm beginning to think that my problem is perhaps because my update history is too large? My datastore.edb file is 134MB, and contains over 1500 entries going back over ten years. I'm wondering if it's that which is causing the errors which are resulting in it being cleared. I deleted the SoftwareDistribution folder completely and let the system recreate it. WUM then didn't show any errors, but just scanned forever without ever finding anything or completing. When I restored the original datastore.edb file from a backup it then failed, wrote the above error into the event log, and cleared the database. So, is there a known limit to how big the installed updates database can be? I can't find any reference to one anywhere. My netbook, where everything seems to work fine with exactly the same setup, has a very much smaller Windows Update history.