On decommissioning of update servers for 2000, XP, (and Vista?) as of July 2019

[AstroSkipper]

21 minutes ago, maile3241 said:

Right. These are urgently needed, otherwise it won't work. I edited my post above again

Ok, on the one hand you solved your connection problem using HTTPSProxy and that's fine, but on the other hand 2025 is your deadline of accessing to MU web site. @Dave-H won't help that either because the original provided ProxHTTPSProxy root certificate doesn't work for him accessing to MU web site.

[maile3241]

40 minutes ago, AstroSkipper said:

Ok, on the one hand you solved your connection problem using HTTPSProxy and that's fine, but on the other hand 2025 is your deadline of accessing to MU web site. @Dave-H won't help that either because the original provided ProxHTTPSProxy root certificate doesn't work for him accessing to MU web site.

It's worth a try? I don't think the site will stay online until 2025 but who knows. I don't know what certificate is required for longer access.

[AstroSkipper]

Final fix of error code 0x80072f8f while accessing WU or MU web site

@Dave-H, @RainyShadow, @maile3241 and all other interested people,
I have definitely solved the problem getting error code 0x80072f8f. I've done a second ProxHTTPSProxy installation just due to testing purpose. I let ProxHTTPSProxy generate a new CA.crt valid until 2032 by deleting old CA.cert file in ProxHTTPSProxy's program folder and opening ProxHTTPSProxy.exe afterwards. Then I installed this root certificate. But it didn't work either. I got error code 0x80072f8f too. I analyzed what had happened and found out it was installed in Trusted Root Certification Authority but for current user only. And that's the cause of the problem. It has to be installed in Trusted Root Certification Authority of local computer anyway. How is it done? Open console by typing mmc, add a snap-in for certificates, then choose for local computer and import your recently generated ProxHTTPSProxy CA certificate to Trusted Root Certification Authority. Finished.
First a screenshot of MU using ProxHTTPSProxy along with recently generated ProxHTTPSProxy CA certificate valid until 2032:

And here is a screenshot of my Trusted Root Certification Authority - local computer:

Hope this will be the final solution to get rid of error code 0x80072f8f forever!

PS: More detailed information relating to ProxHTTPSProxy and HTTPSProxy you can find in this article: 

Kind regards, AstroSkipper

Edited March 23, 2022 by AstroSkipper
addition

[maile3241]

1 minute ago, AstroSkipper said:

@Dave-H, @RainyShadow, @maile3241 and all other interested people, I have definitely solved the problem getting error code 0x80072f8f. I've done a second ProxHTTPSProxy installation just due to testing purpose. I let ProxHTTPSProxy generated a new CA.crt valid until 2032. Then I installed this root certificate. But it didn't work either. I got error code 0x80072f8f too. I analyzed what had happened and found out it was installed in Trusted Root Certification Authority but for current user. And that's the cause of the problem. It has to be installed in Trusted Root Certification Authority of local computer. How is it done? Open console by typing mmc, add a snap-in for certificates, then choose for local computer and import your recently generated ProxHTTPSProxy CA certificate to Trusted Root Certification Authority. Finished. Here a screenshot of MU using ProxHTTPSProxy along with recently generated ProxHTTPSProxy CA certificate valid until 2032: https://imgur.com/hPCB9uF
And here is a screenshot of my Trusted Root Certification Authority - local computer: https://imgur.com/bpfcQhR
Hope this will be the final solution to get rid of error code 0x80072f8f forever!

Thanks very much. Will test it right away.

[maile3241]

6 minutes ago, maile3241 said:

Thanks very much. Will test it right away.

@AstroSkipper Very good work. It works!

[Dave-H]

Yes indeed, so simple once you know!
The automatic selection for the certificate import was obviously getting it wrong, at least for some of us!
I still wonder why it worked for some and not others.
You can do it through the Internet Options Control Panel applet if you select "show physical stores" BTW.
Finally, all's well that ends well, and thank you so much everyone, especially of course @AstroSkipper, for sticking with this for so long.
Cheers, Dave.

[AstroSkipper]

12 minutes ago, Dave-H said:

You can do it through the Internet Options Control Panel applet if you select "show physical stores" BTW.
Finally, all's well that ends well, and thank you so much everyone, especially of course @AstroSkipper, for sticking with this for so long.
Cheers, Dave.

I already knew the alternative way to import certificates using IE but I want to do it in a clear safe way. It was a really long odyssey to find a final solution. I hope it'll work for all of us. Btw I provided links to Windows Update Reset Tool (Script). Have you already looked into? I think it is an interesting tool if problems due to MU occur.

Edited February 11, 2022 by AstroSkipper
correction

[Dave-H]

Yes I did look at that tool thanks, I transferred the help file from the older version into the zip file of the newer version, and I will keep that.
I hope now that I will never have to use it of course!
I've reinstalled Chrome Frame, and restored my original SoftwareDistribution folder as a test, and I now have my original twelve years of update history back!
Microsoft Update is still working fine, so they weren't a factor in it not working before.
I'm still so pleased that this was fixed. All it took, and I thought that would be the case, was for you to see the apparent clock problem yourself on your system.
Once you had it to directly work with, you fixed it, thank you again!

[AstroSkipper]

23 minutes ago, Dave-H said:

Once you had it to directly work with, you fixed it, thank you again!

You're absolutely right! Talking and philosophizing about a problem you haven't got in your own system is contraproductive. So I produced the problem you all had got and could analyze what was going on. The best way someone can have. Btw I installed ProxHTTPSProxy 3e (you can remember!) for testing purpose and it is working perfectly. 

[xpandvistafan]

7 hours ago, AstroSkipper said:

@Dave-H, @RainyShadow, @maile3241 and all other interested people, I have definitely solved the problem getting error code 0x80072f8f. I've done a second ProxHTTPSProxy installation just due to testing purpose. I let ProxHTTPSProxy generate a new CA.crt valid until 2032. Then I installed this root certificate. But it didn't work either. I got error code 0x80072f8f too. I analyzed what had happened and found out it was installed in Trusted Root Certification Authority but for current user only. And that's the cause of the problem. It has to be installed in Trusted Root Certification Authority of local computer anyway. How is it done? Open console by typing mmc, add a snap-in for certificates, then choose for local computer and import your recently generated ProxHTTPSProxy CA certificate to Trusted Root Certification Authority. Finished. Here a screenshot of MU using ProxHTTPSProxy along with recently generated ProxHTTPSProxy CA certificate valid until  2032: https://imgur.com/hPCB9uF
And here is a screenshot of my Trusted Root Certification Authority - local computer: https://imgur.com/bpfcQhR
Hope this will be the final solution to get rid of error code 0x80072f8f forever!

I am not too familiar with generating certificates for ProxHTTPSProxy. Where are you supposed to generate it?

[maile3241]

6 minutes ago, xpandvistafan said:

I am not too familiar with generating certificates for ProxHTTPSProxy. Where are you supposed to generate it?

As soon as you delete the certificate in the ProxhttpsProxy folder and open the program again, a new one will be generated.

[xpandvistafan]

16 minutes ago, maile3241 said:

As soon as you delete the certificate in the ProxhttpsProxy folder and open the program again, a new one will be generated.

Thank you, I was able to update the certificates on XP and 2000 without the f8f error. 

[AstroSkipper]

20 minutes ago, xpandvistafan said:

I am not too familiar with generating certificates for ProxHTTPSProxy. Where are you supposed to generate it?

As @maile3241 already said opening of ProxHTTPSProxy.exe generates automatically a new CA.crt if none is in its program folder. But first you have to delete all certificates in certs subfolder and update your cacert.pem as described in document file.

[xpandvistafan]

20 hours ago, Dave-H said:

Yes I did look at that tool thanks, I transferred the help file from the older version into the zip file of the newer version, and I will keep that.
I hope now that I will never have to use it of course!
I've reinstalled Chrome Frame, and restored my original SoftwareDistribution folder as a test, and I now have my original twelve years of update history back!
Microsoft Update is still working fine, so they weren't a factor in it not working before.
I'm still so pleased that this was fixed. All it took, and I thought that would be the case, was for you to see the apparent clock problem yourself on your system.
Once you had it to directly work with, you fixed it, thank you again!

Lucky you! My update history on my XP machine was deleted last year since I had to reinstall XP. It had update history back to 2003. Great you got it working though.

Edited February 12, 2022 by xpandvistafan

[AstroSkipper]

On 2/11/2022 at 4:42 PM, Dave-H said:

I still wonder why it worked for some and not others.

@Dave-H This can be answered easily. It depends on what the user has done when installing ProxHTTPSProxy CA certficate. If you import ProxHTTPSProxy CA certficate by clicking right mouse button it'll be installed under Trusted Root Certification Authority but for current user. If you import ProxHTTPSProxy CA certficate by using Microsoft Management Console mmc or Internet Options Control Panel applet selecting "show physical stores" of IE you've got the option to point to Trusted Root Certification Authority but for local computer. Therefore all of us installed that certificate under Trusted Root Certification Authority physical store but some of us under account current user and others under account local computer. This is the reason why heinoganda's ProxHTTPS Cert Installer is working for all of us. His installer imports due to automatical selection the certificate PROXCERT.p7b (other format of this certificate) correctly but of course installing the old well known certificate valid until 2025 only. This installer is a modified Roots Certificates Update installer and you know these certificates it has to install are added under account local computer generally.
Furthermore there is a general positive effect for those loving Windows XP (and 2000 or Vista). If correctly integrated into the system we are all now able to use a freshly generated 10 years valid root certificate of ProxHTTPSProxy or HTTPSProxy as long as Windows XP, Internet Explorer access to WWW, TLS 1.2 functionality, Microsoft Update for Windows XP or the user himself still exists. 

Edited February 14, 2022 by AstroSkipper
correction