Last versions of software for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008

[WinClient5270]

22 hours ago, UCyborg said:

No biggie. The name is very similar to how they name their sound cards. You're maintaining quite a list there, GJ!

Thanks for the compliment, I try my best 

Regardless, I'll probably still create the "Compatible Hardware for Windows Vista" thread. I thought about doing it back in 2016 but forgot about it until now. It would help clear up any confusion as to what hardware Vista will run on. I'll probably wait until @greenhillmaniac reposts his findings with running Vista on AMD Ryzen since he confirmed that it works. 

[i430VX]

Freindly Reminder that almost a month later... iTunes is still working.

Apple sure can't manage to break things.

[greenhillmaniac]

5 hours ago, i430VX said:

Apple sure can't manage to break things.

They're not as experienced as Microsoft

[i430VX]

5 hours ago, greenhillmaniac said:

They're not as experienced as Microsoft

LOL, Microsoft is certainly king it that field 

[WinClient5270]

Looks like Rufus, a somewhat popular bootable USB Flash Drive creation tool, has dropped support for Windows Vista (and XP) as of version 3.0, with 2.18 being the last version for these OSes:

https://github.com/pbatard/rufus/blob/master/ChangeLog.txt

Quote

o Version 3.0 (2018.05.29)

UI redesign to follow the flow of user operations (with thanks to Fahad Al-Riyami for the concept)

Drop XP and Vista platform support

Switch all downloads to SSL and use https://rufus.ie as the new base URL

Add ARM64 support for UEFI:NTFS

Fix delays when querying floppy drives during device enumeration

Improve support of efi.img files on Linux ISOs

Improve support for non-ISO9660 compliant openSUSE Leap ISOs

Improve translation support and remove manual positioning

Internal fixes and improvements

I don't have access to Windows Vista right now, so I'm not able to test the software on it at the moment to see if it still works, despite the claim on their official website here for the changelog for version 3.1 of the software, that quite prominently states:

Quote

NOTE: THIS VERSION IS NOT COMPATIBLE WITH WINDOWS XP OR WINDOWS VISTA.

As such, I have have removed the ONG status from the Rufus list entry, and have listed Rufus 2.18 as the last version for Windows Vista, along with a download link for the software (Note: this is subject to change in the future if the software is found to be working on Windows Vista, in which case I will update Rufus to UNS status):

On 3/1/2016 at 8:31 PM, WinClient5270 said:

Rufus 2.18 (FREE, OS) Download from vendor here: Rufus 2.18 installer - Portable version

Edited June 24, 2018 by WinClient5270

[i430VX]

Version 3.0 and 3.1 Confirmed NOT Working On XP or Vista. Neither normal version or portable. They just silently close.

[VistaLover]

On 6/24/2018 at 5:12 PM, i430VX said:

Version 3.0 and 3.1 Confirmed NOT Working On XP or Vista. Neither normal version or portable. They just silently close.

Yes, I downloaded latest "portable" executable, rufus-3.1p.exe, on my Vista SP2 x86 laptop; the EXE is UPXed, so I had to first decompress it to a 2.57 MiB file... 

Inspection with Dependency Walker reveals it calls two API functions in kernel32.dll that are missing in Vista's version (6.0.6002.24170) of that system file :

Edited June 28, 2018 by VistaLover

[UCyborg]

Here's the patch that can be applied on top of latest revision of Rufus source code to restore Windows Vista support and the executable (version 3.1.1321).    

I experienced strange bug where the code that is supposed to prevent DLL sideloading causes UI elements to lose Aero look and reverts to classic, so the patch removes that. The mitigation doesn't have much value IMO, if you're worried that the program will load malicious DLL from its folder, then you've already lost by getting such DLL in the first place.

Still, the relation between UI look and the DLL search directory is odd. At first I thought older version of comctl32.dll was getting loaded, that's not the case though.

Calling SetDefaultDllDirectories does it. It's one of those functions that were added with an update and the issue appears to be exclusive to Vista. Unless there's a separate update addressing that.

[i430VX]

Glad you fixed it for Vista. I was hoping it would work on XP as well... nope. .

From Vista to XP kernel-wise it's a much larger jump than 7 to Vista, I suppose.

Edited June 25, 2018 by i430VX

[UCyborg]

1 hour ago, i430VX said:

I was hoping it would work on XP as well... nope.

There are some extra dependencies and I'm no expert on Windows API. I noticed that for Vista, those 2 missing functions in kernel32.dll were originally implemented in psapi.dll. Microsoft moved them to kernel32.dll in Windows 7 and since that OS onwards, the versions in psapi.dll just redirect to real functions in kernel32.dll which Rufus tries to use, but they don't exist on Vista, so we can use the ones in psapi.dll.

[VistaLover]

11 hours ago, UCyborg said:

Here's the patch that can be applied on top of latest revision of Rufus source code to restore Windows Vista support and the executable (version 3.1.1321).

Thanks a mil for your patch and compiled executable

If you had been following my previous posts (most of them now gone with the server crash ),
you'd have known I am a fan of portable apps/installations; well, if one renames your Rufus executable
so it ends in "*p.exe", it just turns itself into portable mode and saves its settings in an adjacent .ini file!
Works like a charm on Vista SP2 x86

All in all, a sterling job for the Vista community

[Jody Thornton]

Seems Moonchild has different ideas on Pale Moon 28 support for Vista.

https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=19524

It appears now that (despite features being limited on Vista) that Pale Moon 28 WILL run.  Perhaps Basilisk won't, but Pale Moon will.

Now I'd like to find a way to get MP4 codecs works on the x64 production version.  :(

 

[burd]

1 hour ago, Jody Thornton said:

Seems Moonchild has different ideas on Pale Moon 28 support for Vista.

https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=19524

It appears now that (despite features being limited on Vista) that Pale Moon 28 WILL run.  Perhaps Basilisk won't, but Pale Moon will.

Now I'd like to find a way to get MP4 codecs works on the x64 production version.  :(

 

he says basilisk and palemoon will work in the future

[Jody Thornton]

So where was it defined (and it was) that UXP wound NOT work under Vista? Because it seemed to create a lot of FUD.

 

[WinClient5270]

As it stands right now, Pale Moon 28 Beta 1 will not run in Windows Vista, since the software is compiled to run on Windows NT 6.1 or later:

However, this restriction alone can be circumvented using blackwingcat's PEMAKER software, which has been used to get Firefox 53.0.3, Cyberfox 52, and Basilisk (UP TO v2018.03.21) working in Vista (see this post for more details). 

However, even after editing the appropriate EXE files using PEMAKER, the browser still won't run in Windows Vista due to missing Win7+ functions:

Unless Moonchild plans to restore Vista support in a future build, I don't see the final version of Pale Moon 28 being Vista-compatible. First of all, Vista would have to start being targeted when compiling the software in Visual Studio, to get rid of that "not a valid win32 application" error. It would also have to be figured out what functions Pale Moon is looking for that aren't in Windows Vista, and those would have to be either disabled (if they're not crucial to the browser's overall functionality), or rerouted if the missing call exists elsewhere in Vista, similar to what @UCyborg did to allow the latest version of Rufus to run in Vista. 

For now, I have listed Pale Moon 27.9.x as the last major release for Windows Vista, and it's going to stay that way until further notice. I hate to be a downer, but I'm not really convinced that Moonchild would be willing to put much effort into allowing new versions of the browser to run in Windows Vista, especially when you consider how few users it has... That's just my 2 cents. I hope I'm wrong 

Edited June 27, 2018 by WinClient5270