[WIP] Windows Vista Extended Kernel

[D.Draker]

Someone already tried playing the game Mortal Kombat 1 (2023 remake) using the October Kernel?

[Tester Machine]

The current version of the extended kernel does not seem to work well, I tried Windows Vista Business SP2 x64 + Updates 2024 (WS2008) and I get errors in some programs trying to search for a folder that does not exist.

I will try to try the same edition of Windows Vista but with 2017 updates (EOL)

[LiptonAcer]

On 1/4/2024 at 6:59 AM, AstragonQC said:

Some people have bet on the hypothetical "Premium Assurance" that MS sold to companies between 2017 and 2018 before being replaced with ESUs that stated "6 more years of updates after the original EoL date" and Windows Server 2008/R2 was mentioned in it. Also when MS replaced PA with ESUs, it was stated in a document (Page 5) that MS will honor the terms of PA for companies that have bough it, which "proves" that some companies may actually have bought those 6 additional years of support.

Some people are confident about the fact at least one company took the Premium Assurance when it was available (as it was a "buy early, pay less" model as this document proves it in Page 4), but they're unsure on how MS will distribute the update packages. The most probable is that MS will just continue to publish them through the MSU Catalog with another layer of artificial locks to "prevent" installing it on systems that are not "targeted" to receive them.

Those 6 years starts upon EoL date (so January 14, 2020), which means the actual deadline is January 13, 2026 (which is mentioned in this slide, at slide 11).
(If not counting some institutions like the army that will (without any doubt) buy additional support to Microsoft in order to maintain some systems until their decommission because XP is not the only in this case, 7 will probably have a such treatment as well, and also 10 in the future).

--

So to correct you on your supposition, the EoL schedule is more something like this (in case we can access Server 2008/R2 updates packages after January):

• October 2024: Windows 7 x86 (with the EoL of POSReady 7 as Server 2008 R2 is only available as x64).
• January 2026: Windows Vista, Windows 7 x64.
• October 2026: Windows 8 & 8.1.

(Or maybe *Plot twist* some companies will request more updates to MS, but that's more going into a crack theory rather than a probable thing).

--

(Oh and the funnier is on the slide I mentioned earlier is at slide 21 where they just copy/pasted the text because it's written that Svr2012/R2 to EOL in January 2023, which is not the case. But it also describes something more interesting: MS also considered to provide this Premium Assurance plan on Server 2012/R2 and get updates until (October) 2029).

The NT6 OSes never-ending lifespans are just hilarious. And Vista will outpass XP as the longest-supported OS with slightly more than 19 years worth of updates (December 2006-January 2026).

Are you sure ?
I have the impression that Server 2008 is no longer supported
Watch the update history for server 2008 r1 / r2
none received an update for the month of February
single server 2012

[AstragonQC]

21 minutes ago, LiptonAcer said:

Are you sure ?
I have the impression that Server 2008 is no longer supported
Watch the update history for server 2008 r1 / r2
none received an update for the month of February
single server 2012

Search on the Catalog, the updates are there

https://www.catalog.update.microsoft.com/Search.aspx?q=2024-02 Windows Server 2008

Edited February 13 by AstragonQC
WS08 updates

[LiptonAcer]

11 minutes ago, AstragonQC said:

Search on the Catalog, the updates are there

https://www.catalog.update.microsoft.com/Search.aspx?q=2024-02 Windows Server 2008

Thank you so much
You save my life.
but it's surprising that it doesn't appear on the update history.
Maybe they will appear in a few days?

[Zorba the Geek]

I am planning to embark on a kernel extension for Windows XP with a topic started here.  Perhaps win32 or someone else interested in this Vista Kernel Extension could advise me about where to obtain NT6.x functions that can be integrated into the Microsoft NT5.1 libraries.  I am wary of extracting these functions from Win7 libraries due to possible incompatibility with the XP kernel, but I am not qualified to judge what problems might arise if you do this.  An alternative source sometimes recommended for extracting NT6.1 functions for kernel extensions is Wine.  A Wine download for Slackware can be downloaded from here.  Is there a reason why Wine would be a preferable source for extracted functions compared to Microsoft libraries?  Why does no-one recommend extracting NT6.1 functions from Reactos?  Should I rely on BlackWingCat's W2K Extended Kernel 3.0e as a source for extracted NT6.1 functions assuming that he is expert enough to select this code from appropriate sources?

[Channel 2012]

I can confirm that OneDrive is still not working in the Extended Kernel. The Windows 7 version of OneDrive can install without incident, but gives an "Entry point not found" error, saying "The procedure entry point SspiPromptForCredentialsW could not be located in the dynamic link library credui.dll."

[patchworks]

On 3/12/2024 at 12:50 PM, Zorba the Geek said:

Why does no-one recommend extracting NT6.1 functions from Reactos?

Totally agree: a more strict collaboration with open source projects like ROS would benefit all.

[Sergiaws]

Hi @Win32 and others! Can be implemented in extended kernel the function SetWaitableTimerEx and other similar stuff that rely on it? I read on some Microsoft forums that the mentioned procedure is used on some Office 365 installers and other Microsoft products, so maybe it might improve Office 2016+ in Vista, but not sure.

In my situation, I've been trying to run NVDA 2024.1 in Windows Vista. They migrated from python 3.7 to Python 3.11, however that shouldn't be a big deal since I've been running Python 3.9+ with the dlls provided here.

https://github.com/nalexandru/api-ms-win-core-path-HACK

The deal is that running the installer or a portable copy of NVDA gives me the following error: The procedure entry point SetWaitableTimerEx could not be located in the dynamic link library KERNEL32.dll. Note that if you want to test, you need to spoof the sistem as Windows 8.1 or 10 to run it successfully.

[Yordan]

Hello to all again! I have an issue and I can't install VxKex on Windows Vista with the extended kernel and does anyone know how this can be fixed?😕

Edited April 20 by Yordan
Little edits

[D.Draker]

3 hours ago, Yordan said:

Hello to all again! I have an issue and I can't install VxKex on Windows Vista with the extended kernel and does anyone know how this can be fixed?😕

You can't!

"VxKex is a set of API extensions for Windows 7 that allow some Windows 8, 8.1 and 10-exclusive applications to run on Windows 7."

You confused Vista with Wn7.

[Yordan]

7 hours ago, D.Draker said:

You can't!

"VxKex is a set of API extensions for Windows 7 that allow some Windows 8, 8.1 and 10-exclusive applications to run on Windows 7."

You confused Vista with Wn7.

Ok, but why no one ateast explain why this project was abandoned. Why did everyone turned against this project.

 

[AstragonQC]

7 hours ago, Yordan said:

Ok, but why no one ateast explain why this project was abandoned. Why did everyone turned against this project.

It isn't abandoned, just Win32 have changed the main goals of the project.

I already posted a comment here earlier explaining that he wants the EK to be more focused on making drivers/advanced things to work rather than just running programs, as it's a better deal to develop alternatives of popular programs like Chromium by making a version specifically dedicated to older platforms rather than backporting whole chunks of system functions to make the original program to work, that are sometimes requiring indecent amounts of work for something that can potentially never came out or be completely unstable.

That's primarily why he started developing Supermium: backporting the memory sharing API from Windows 10 to make Chrome 112+ to run simply doesn't worth the hundreds of hours of research/development he could have to invest in, in order to make something kinda "operational" and which "is not conflicting with the rest of the system". It's cheaper and quicker to create Supermium, which is perfectly adapted to run on the OS you want it to run into rather than making the big popular software to "run" in a semi-unstable way because your implementation of the said backported API is flawed and needs several dozen of extra hours to completely fix and finally having something working. But here also I said that once he would have done a such job, the application may have been updated and now requires another set of APIs that must be also backported to finally have that program to work! This is an endless cycle.

For the moment Win32's priorities are elsewhere, but I can ensure you that the day he would work on an update for this project. (Source: trust me bro but it'll happen for sure)

--

<OT::GrainOfSalt> Also a parallel can be made at a certain degree with VxKex, because there wasn't any releases between August 2022 and February 2024. Many people said this project was dead, but one day the long rewrite we all waited for finally came out, after 1.5 year. Just remember that those individuals are doing that generally on their spare time, some also does it completely for free and with good faith, and thus, owe you nothing in any way, except eventually donations for the many headaches they got while debugging "why that a*s-programmed application isn't running while another one, based on the same framework, runs flawlessly?!".

Anyway, for a such projects I can't complaint because they do a job a very few people accept to do, and generally without requesting anything back. Yes, the time gap between two releases can be long, but hey, they have a life and other projects, and like I said, they do all their work voluntarily, wanting nothing back from you except maybe testing and your support.</OT>

[D.Draker]

13 hours ago, Yordan said:

Why did everyone turned against this project.

I never turned against it! It was only a handful of users, one of them being with the name starting with "Not.......". Your original question is off-topic, you were trying to install something that belongs to Windows 7 only.

[D.Draker]

4 hours ago, AstragonQC said:

It isn't abandoned, just Win32 have changed the main goals of the project.

I hope so, too! Please tell me, a couple of years ago win32 released 39x.xx Nvidia driver, does the control panel work for you with the latest kernel? Thank you very much.