Last versions of software for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008

[WinClient5270]

On another note, in an effort to give the list more exposure and keep it from getting buried into obscurity, I will now post comments containing a log of any major updates/changes to the list each time they are made. I hope this is okay with the admins.
Prior to now, I was simply summarizing the changes in the "Reason for edit" section. However, the section has a character limit that doesn't always allow for me to mention all of the changes made, unless I leave out some information, which is not desirable for me. 

[burd]

2 hours ago, 2008WindowsVista said:

On another note, in an effort to give the list more exposure and keep it from getting buried into obscurity, I will now post comments containing a log of any major updates/changes to the list each time they are made. I hope this is okay with the admins.
Prior to now, I was simply summarizing the changes in the "Reason for edit" section. However, the section has a character limit that doesn't always allow for me to mention all of the changes made, unless I leave out some information, which is not desirable for me. 

firefox 53.0 works on vista you could add it but it needs a bit of modifications,install it on a win7+ pc use pemaker to change sys and subsys o/s from 6.1 to 6.0,it works flawlessly
Google Chrome 50 works on vista,install on a windows 7+ pc and launch in vista(Chrome 51 launches perfectly but nothing works)
Opera 37 works aswell instructions are same as google chrome

Setup wont launch so Win7+ is needed,unless some other means of extraction is used.
http://imgur.com/a/cuncn

http://imgur.com/a/myq9X

http://imgur.com/a/LERsT

According to me these are probably the final versions unofficially working/supported , also note that these browser versions aren't supported anymore even though they are pretty recent.

Edited June 24, 2017 by burd

[VistaLover]

13 hours ago, burd said:

firefox 53.0 works on vista you could add it but it needs a bit of modifications,install it on a win7+ pc use pemaker to change sys and subsys o/s from 6.1 to 6.0,it works flawlessly 

While the proper .exe setup won't install on Vista itself, you can download and install on Vista the portable (PAF) setup, available from portableapps repo:

https://downloads.sourceforge.net/portableapps/FirefoxPortable_53.0.3_English.paf.exe

So no need for a Win7+ box; I have used myself pe_patch.exe

http://www.the-sz.com/products/pe_patch/

to change subsys version to 6.0; place pe_patch.exe inside /App/firefox/ and simply drag & drop firefox.exe onto it - its GUI opens; just manually change "Sub System Version", then click "Save" & "Exit" in the bottom.

What pe_patch.exe patching does is actually reverting bugzilla bug 1322646 ; since the Firefox 53.0 code doesn't include functions not present in the Vista (in fact XP, too) kernell, the patched firefox executable will perfectly launch on Vista SP2 (should also do on XP SP3 !).

While Fx 53.0.3 should be fine on Vista for casual browsing, your "it works flawlessly" statement is, sadly, not entirely true . The Firefox devs (namely a Japanese guy who harbours some unusual aversion to Vista) were very quick/keen to excise vital Vista support code; I tried to fight their decisions in the relevant bugzilla bugs back in the day, but, as you may assume, to no avail...

In fact, at the initial bugs, Mozilla were to only drop support for XP, but, in another Google Chrome aping,  Vista was put in the same boat... But I'm going OT here...

Bug 1324183 has removed WMF support from Firefox on Vista, so Fx 53.0.x can't use system codecs (MP3, AAC, h264) to play back standalone .mp3/.mp4/.m4a media files or play back mp3/mp4 streams via HTML5. Adobe CDM has been removed, so has support for Quicktime/VLC NPAPI plugins, so media playback is a serious drawback here... Another bug (1329547) completes what 1324183 started... You can check yourself by visiting HTML5 test or youtube html5 .

In another bug, WebGL(2) renderers, at least on my machine, can't use D3D11 and fall back to D3D9x;

in Fx 52.2.0, about:support, graphics section:

WebGL Renderer	Google Inc. -- ANGLE (Software Adapter Direct3D11 vs_4_1 ps_4_1)
WebGL2 Renderer	Google Inc. -- ANGLE (Software Adapter Direct3D11 vs_4_1 ps_4_1)

In Fx 53.0.3:

WebGL Renderer	Google Inc. -- ANGLE (Mobile Intel(R) 965 Express Chipset Family Direct3D9Ex vs_3_0 ps_3_0)
WebGL2 Renderer	WebGL creation failed: * Error during ANGLE OpenGL init. * Error during ANGLE OpenGL init. * Error during ANGLE OpenGL init. * Error during ANGLE OpenGL init. * Error during ANGLE OpenGL init. * Exhausted GL driver caps.

There is additional XP/Vista specific code that was removed in the transition from 52.0 -> 53.0, I can't go on in detail here, so after my curiosity tests running 53.0.x, I saw no real gain in running that on Vista and went back to the supported 52ESR branch (currently on 52.2.0).

And to save someone the trouble of trying to launch Fx 54.0 on Vista just by lowering subsys version, it doesn't work :

Quote

Google Chrome 50 works on vista

... As was reported by me 14 months ago ; again, the portable installation was used. Opera 37.0.2178.54 is based on Chrome 50.0.2661.102 code, so that is why it runs fine on Vista:

As Opera 36 for XP/Vista has turned out to be a sort of a "joke" (hasn't been updated since August 2016), why not use (on Vista) Opera 37 ? They should be probably equally vulnerable, security-wise ...

[burd]

2 hours ago, VistaLover said:

While the proper .exe setup won't install on Vista itself, you can download and install on Vista the portable (PAF) setup, available from portableapps repo:

https://downloads.sourceforge.net/portableapps/FirefoxPortable_53.0.3_English.paf.exe

So no need for a Win7+ box; I have used myself pe_patch.exe

http://www.the-sz.com/products/pe_patch/

to change subsys version to 6.0; place pe_patch.exe inside /App/firefox/ and simply drag & drop firefox.exe onto it - its GUI opens; just manually change "Sub System Version", then click "Save" & "Exit" in the bottom.

What pe_patch.exe patching does is actually reverting bugzilla bug 1322646 ; since the Firefox 53.0 code doesn't include functions not present in the Vista (in fact XP, too) kernell, the patched firefox executable will perfectly launch on Vista SP2 (should also do on XP SP3 !).

While Fx 53.0.3 should be fine on Vista for casual browsing, your "it works flawlessly" statement is, sadly, not entirely true . The Firefox devs (namely a Japanese guy who harbours some unusual aversion to Vista) were very quick/keen to excise vital Vista support code; I tried to fight their decisions in the relevant bugzilla bugs back in the day, but, as you may assume, to no avail...

In fact, at the initial bugs, Mozilla were to only drop support for XP, but, in another Google Chrome aping,  Vista was put in the same boat... But I'm going OT here...

Bug 1324183 has removed WMF support from Firefox on Vista, so Fx 53.0.x can't use system codecs (MP3, AAC, h264) to play back standalone .mp3/.mp4/.m4a media files or play back mp3/mp4 streams via HTML5. Adobe CDM has been removed, so has support for Quicktime/VLC NPAPI plugins, so media playback is a serious drawback here... Another bug (1329547) completes what 1324183 started... You can check yourself by visiting HTML5 test or youtube html5 .

In another bug, WebGL(2) renderers, at least on my machine, can't use D3D11 and fall back to D3D9x;

in Fx 52.2.0, about:support, graphics section:

WebGL Renderer	Google Inc. -- ANGLE (Software Adapter Direct3D11 vs_4_1 ps_4_1)
WebGL2 Renderer	Google Inc. -- ANGLE (Software Adapter Direct3D11 vs_4_1 ps_4_1)

In Fx 53.0.3:

WebGL Renderer	Google Inc. -- ANGLE (Mobile Intel(R) 965 Express Chipset Family Direct3D9Ex vs_3_0 ps_3_0)
WebGL2 Renderer	WebGL creation failed: * Error during ANGLE OpenGL init. * Error during ANGLE OpenGL init. * Error during ANGLE OpenGL init. * Error during ANGLE OpenGL init. * Error during ANGLE OpenGL init. * Exhausted GL driver caps.

There is additional XP/Vista specific code that was removed in the transition from 52.0 -> 53.0, I can't go on in detail here, so after my curiosity tests running 53.0.x, I saw no real gain in running that on Vista and went back to the supported 52ESR branch (currently on 52.2.0).

And to save someone the trouble of trying to launch Fx 54.0 on Vista just by lowering subsys version, it doesn't work :

... As was reported by me 14 months ago ; again, the portable installation was used. Opera 37.0.2178.54 is based on Chrome 50.0.2661.102 code, so that is why it runs fine on Vista:

As Opera 36 for XP/Vista has turned out to be a sort of a "joke" (hasn't been updated since August 2016), why not use (on Vista) Opera 37 ? They should be probably equally vulnerable, security-wise ...

yes all are very vulnerable,also i wouldnt recommend using any of these,maybe only google chrome since its smooth and works but its still heavily vulnerable since its quite old now,also im not quite sure what you mean by "casual use" i use it for everything possible and i expect it to work the same as 52esr and yes dx9ex is being used and not dx11

Edited June 24, 2017 by burd

[VistaLover]

17 minutes ago, burd said:

im not quite sure what you mean by "casual use" i use it for everything possible and i expect it to work the same as 52esr

... Haven't you read the part of my post about media playback (and some gfx) capabilities of Fx 53 being seriously impaired on Vista? Fx 53 on Vista will never work the same as the 52esr branch, because under the hood some functionalities that still work in 52esr don't on 53; just compare the youtubehtml5 score of 53.0.3 (on Vista)

to 52.2.0esr (on Vista):

E.g., this icecast mp3 stream will play natively in a tab on 52esr, 53 won't be able to play it (and may offer to download instead, or open via a dedicated player) ...

[burd]

25 minutes ago, VistaLover said:

... Haven't you read the part of my post about media playback (and some gfx) capabilities of Fx 53 being seriously impaired on Vista? Fx 53 on Vista will never work the same as the 52esr branch, because under the hood some functionalities that still work in 52esr don't on 53; just compare the youtubehtml5 score of 53.0.3 (on Vista)

to 52.2.0esr (on Vista):

E.g., this icecast mp3 stream will play natively in a tab on 52esr, 53 won't be able to play it (and may offer to download instead, or open via a dedicated player) ...

aah yes my bad, anyhow speaking of waterfox 64 it has dropped support for xp/vista as it was based on firefox itself so it shouldnt be that suprising,but even then waterfox shouldve supported it somehow

[WinClient5270]

Speaking of web browsers, Pale Moon 64-bit crashes for me on Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008, and I want to know if anyone else can reproduce this problem or if it's just me.

Upon starting the browser, I'm greeted with a "Stopped working" error, with the crash being caused by MSVCR120.dll. It affects all versions of Pale Moon from 27.0.0 64-bit onward, with 26.5.0 64-bit working just fine, as well as all 32 bit versions of Pale Moon (latest version included). 

Can one of the Vista (64-bit) users here install the latest version of the 64-bit variant of Pale Moon and see if you can reproduce the problem I'm having?

I posted about it on the Pale Moon forum, and received a reply from the main developer that I needed to send a crash dump to see what the problem is. However, I'd like to make sure the issue just isn't on my end before doing that.

Said post (and more info about the error) can be viewed here: https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=16016

[burd]

17 hours ago, 2008WindowsVista said:

Speaking of web browsers, Pale Moon 64-bit crashes for me on Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008, and I want to know if anyone else can reproduce this problem or if it's just me.

Upon starting the browser, I'm greeted with a "Stopped working" error, with the crash being caused by MSVCR120.dll. It affects all versions of Pale Moon from 27.0.0 64-bit onward, with 26.5.0 64-bit working just fine, as well as all 32 bit versions of Pale Moon (latest version included). 

Can one of the Vista (64-bit) users here install the latest version of the 64-bit variant of Pale Moon and see if you can reproduce the problem I'm having?

I posted about it on the Pale Moon forum, and received a reply from the main developer that I needed to send a crash dump to see what the problem is. However, I'd like to make sure the issue just isn't on my end before doing that.

Said post (and more info about the error) can be viewed here: https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=16016

To fix,download vcredist 2013 and replace the msvcr120.dll in your palemoon folder,this willl make it work

get the msvcr120.dll from windows/system32 after the vcredist 2013 installation

The problem is the inbuilt dll inside the palemoon folder which needs to be replaced by the one from your system32 folder
 

Edited June 25, 2017 by burd

[Jody Thornton]

Hey Look!  We have copy cats over at Bleeping Computer ...lol

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/t/648063/security-updates-for-vista-after-end-of-support-windows-server-2008-patches/

[Dibya]

Just now, burd said:

i already told about the fix,download vcredist 2013 and replace the msvcr120.dll in your palemoon folder,this willl make it work

get the msvcr120 from windows/system32 after the vcredist 2013 installation

The problem is the inbuilt dll inside the palemoon folder which needs to be replaced by the one from your system32 folder
 

Are you sure ? I never faced such on xp with Extended XP

[burd]

1 hour ago, Dibya said:

Are you sure ? I never faced such on xp with Extended XP

yes,its needed to work under vista,i had previously posted a topic stating palemoon and logitech gaming software wasnt working or crashing(stopped working close program) i had to replace the msvcr120 file for palemoon and for LGS i didnt need to do anything it fixed itself.

Only VCRedist 2013 is needed to fix these two.

[VistaLover]

4 hours ago, JodyT said:

Hey Look!  We have copy cats over at Bleeping Computer ...lol

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/t/648063/security-updates-for-vista-after-end-of-support-windows-server-2008-patches/

Greetings from tropical Greece (36 Celsius as I write ). I really think that post should have been placed in the Updates Thread , the one you started!

Well, no-one claimed exclusivity here, it's not like someone's discovered a new element, given past experience from POSReady updates ported to XP (and Server 2012 ported to Win8). Perhaps the "Sardoc" person did, in fact, got his/her idea from us (in which case a mention would've been proper), or perhaps not; either way, it's not like "water been spilt on sugar" (Greek proverb!).

What I'm worried the most is the event Microsoft block the installation of WS2008 updates on Vista, as they did with their "Malicious Software Removal Tool" - which will run on WS2008 but not on Vista, despite both being Windows-6.0 .

[Jody Thornton]

2 minutes ago, VistaLover said:

Greetings from tropical Greece (36 Celsius as I write ). I really think that post should have been placed in the Updates Thread , the one you started!

Well, no-one claimed exclusivity here, it's not like someone's discovered a new element, given past experience from POSReady updates ported to XP (and Server 2012 ported to Win8). Perhaps the "Sardoc" person did, in fact, got his/her idea from us (in which case a mention would've been proper), or perhaps not; either way, it's not like "water been spilt on sugar" (Greek proverb!).

What I'm worried the most is the event Microsoft block the installation of WS2008 updates on Vista, as they did with their "Malicious Software Removal Tool" - which will run on WS2008 but not on Vista, despite both being Windows-6.0 .

Actually, I did mean to post it in that thread.  Perhaps a moderator could move it for us ....lol.

And guess what, I'll bet that I was the first one to even entertain the idea of manual extended updates for Window 8 from its "server" counterpart.  NO ONE was even discussing the idea before I brought it up.  And immediately at the time, I thought to myself, I wonder if that could be applied to Vista.  Remember, this was October 2015.

Even when I mentioned it on the DM Forums for Windows 8 and Vista, members there poo-pooed the idea.  So I would put serious money down that I was among the first to even think of the idea.

[Jody Thornton]

Who is the best moderator to contact regarding moving these last few posts regarding Vista updates?

[VistaLover]

15 hours ago, 2008WindowsVista said:

Pale Moon 64-bit crashes for me on Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008

Upon starting the browser, I'm greeted with a "Stopped working" error, with the crash being caused by MSVCR120.dll. It affects all versions of Pale Moon from 27.0.0 64-bit onward, with 26.5.0 64-bit working just fine, as well as all 32 bit versions of Pale Moon (latest version included).

Sadly, I'm on 32bit Vista HP SP2, so can't test this myself - but I did download "Palemoon-Portable-27.3.0.win64.exe" and extracted it with 7-zip.

File msvcr120.dll that ships with it is on version 12.0.21005.1 (dig. sig. 20131005), which is already outdated, since MS has issued several updates to it; their "Microsoft Visual C++ 2013 Redistributable" package was on version 12.0.30501.0 (dig. sig. 20140501), while update KB3138367 installs version 12.0.40649.5 (dig. sig. 20160216).

But I think your issue with Palemoon x64 on Vista/WS2008 falls into what is described in Update for Visual C++ 2013 and Visual C++ Redistributable Package :

Quote

This problem occurs because the Visual C++ 2013 x64 C Runtime does not check whether the operating system supports AVX state saving before it tries to run AVX or FMA3 instructions.

Vista/WS2008 do not support AVX state saving, hence (outdated) msvcr120.dll crashes...

Install KB3179560 (dig. sig. 20160707) from that page (I would suggest both x86 & x64 .exe files, English - US locale), delete msvcp120.dll & msvcr120.dll from the "Palemoon" directory and then reboot - palemoon.exe 64bit should be able to load the updated versions of these dlls from System32 - if not, do as advised by burd

Hope I've helped