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

[xpandvistafan]

@Dave-H ProxHTTPSProxy is not working for me. It just says SSL passthrough and then it does not connect to the catalog.

[Dave-H]

Maybe it won't work "out of the box".

Try with my HTTPSProxy config.ini file in your installation, it has a lot added to it compared with the default version.

Config.ini

[Vistapocalypse]

@xpandvistafan OT, but fascinated to see a McAfee product in your IE8 screenshot, since that AV ended support for XP/Vista about 5 years ago. A quick search suggests it must be a legacy version of McAfee WebAdvisor, which now requires Windows 7 or later and IE10 or later. What version, is it still working, and can it still be downloaded?

[xpandvistafan]

It can be downloaded from the home.mcafee.com if you have a valid subscription. I downloaded it on Firefox 52.90 ESR. Yes it still works. I do not currently know the version.

Edited March 31, 2021 by xpandvistafan

[xpandvistafan]

Windows Update is now giving a Server is too busy error. This could be Microsoft taking down the website for good. It was working earlier today.

[Vistapocalypse]

There were most likely no new updates for XP today. The link I gave says WebAdvisor is free, but also gives discouraging system requirements, and I notice an exclamation mark in a red circle on your system tray McAfee icon...

[xpandvistafan]

@Vistapocalypse If you have a valid McAfee subscription you can sign in to home.mcafee.com and it will let you download an older version only if you are on XP and Vista.

[Dave-H]

14 hours ago, xpandvistafan said:

Windows Update is now giving a Server is too busy error. This could be Microsoft taking down the website for good. It was working earlier today.

Is that using my "config.ini" on ProxHTTPSProxy?

[xpandvistafan]

 @Dave-HI went to windowsupdate.microsoft.com on my main computer and it says the same thing. It could be that the website is down. It made no affect turning off the proxy.

 

Edited March 31, 2021 by xpandvistafan

[Dave-H]

Well I'm glad the replacement config.ini at least enabled it to try to connect without immediately failing!
I can't connect to Microsoft Update either at the moment.
Maybe a temporary problem, but who knows?
I was actually surprised that they didn't take the update v6 web pages down anyway as soon as they changed the security protocol requirements, there are no supported operating systems or programs that still use that mechanism now anyway AFAIK!

[xpandvistafan]

@Dave-H I noticed that the Window Update error used to be 80244019 now it is 80072EFE. Do you know when this error changed? I know that fe2.update.microsoft.com restricted to TLS 1.2 on October 30 2020. But when did update.microsoft.com change to TLS 1.2 only?

[Usher]

 

23 hours ago, xpandvistafan said:

I noticed that around Mid-March, The Microsoft Update Catalog is now restricted to HTTPS with TLS 1.2 with ECDHE_RSA only. Windows XP with Internet Explorer 8 can no longer access it. But Windows 2000 with the extended kernel can access it.

I have no problem with Windows XP fully updated with POSReady updates. Just opened the site and downloaded one file. Maybe you have connected to https://catalog.update.microsoft.com/v7/site/Home.aspx (Catalog for newer systems) or to https://www.update.microsoft.com/microsoftupdate/v6/default.aspx  (Windows Update site) rather than to https://www.catalog.update.microsoft.com/

[xpandvistafan]

@Usher  I was connecting to the catalog for newer systems. I used that because you used to be able to connect to it under HTTP. Between March 10 and March 20, Microsoft put HSTS on both the catalog for newer systems and the catalog for older systems. The difference is that the catalog for older systems supports TLS 1.0 but the catalog for newer systems supports only TLS 1.2.

[Usher]

Currently there are problems with both https://update.microsoft.com and https://widowsupdate.microsoft.com pages or subdomains. Firefox 52.9 also cannot connect or reports SEC_ERROR_UNKNOWN_ISSUER error. Only Catalog seems to work OK.

[VistaLover]

21 hours ago, Vistapocalypse said:

and I notice an exclamation mark in a red circle on your system tray McAfee icon...

Pardon me if I didn't get this right , but does that (greyed-out) McAfee tray icon belong to Web Advisor?

From previous discussion, I got the impression Web Advisor is a browser extension/plugin...

 In any case, in a recent McAfee support article, they noted that the legacy McAfee products that were compatible with XP (& Vista) are no longer able to receive definition updates since Jan 1st 2021 , which might explain the greying-out and the (white) exclamation mark in a red background - this is me assuming the icon belongs to one of these legacy McAfee products...
If, OTOH, the tray icon does belong to Web Advisor, which is still able to receive def updates (and user has set it in "manual" mode and delayed updating it), then this sets an exception to McAfee's support policy wrt XP...