I finished building my VM. It turns out that my collection of WinXP updates was almost complete. I was only missing kb4500331. I determined this by first building my VM with the updates I had, then comparing it against some of the WSUS Offline collections available on archive.org. kb4500331 was the only update to get installed by them.

It's a pain in the ass to build a WinXP machine and update it like this, but it's definitely doable.

One thing of note: Automatic Updates never worked once at any point in my build process. Not even by forcing it with "wuauclt /detectnow". Is anybody out there actually still getting updates via Automatic Updates? If so, how are you doing it? My VM is fully patched and it's still not working.

I'm coming in late, but I noticed a number of people recommending SP3. Is there any special sauce there? I know some games rely on functionality of later service packs.

I've been running SP1 on my main machine because SP2 and later feel really bloated compared to SP1 (can you make Windows Defender disappear with no notifications?).

I've never had a problem with SP3. I slipstreamed SP3 into my installer ISOs when it came out and never ran SP2, SP1, or RTM ever again.

I have 20 hard drives with XP, and automatic updates don't work on any of them. Luckily I had already fully patched them before Microsoft sabotaged the process 5 years ago.

Some people claim to have it working, but I have my doubts.

There also a few other sites that have sprung up recently claiming to do what Microsoft won't - but you have to install something.

Robbbert wrote on 2024-11-08, 14:26:

Some people claim to have it working, but I have my doubts.

I agree. I finished my updates and disabled both Automatic Updates and its related service. There's no reason to enable it or run it anymore.

KT7AGuy wrote on 2024-11-08, 12:44:

I finished building my VM. It turns out that my collection of WinXP updates was almost complete. I was only missing kb4500331. I determined this by first building my VM with the updates I had, then comparing it against some of the WSUS Offline collections available on archive.org. kb4500331 was the only update to get installed by them.

It's a pain in the ass to build a WinXP machine and update it like this, but it's definitely doable.

One thing of note: Automatic Updates never worked once at any point in my build process. Not even by forcing it with "wuauclt /detectnow". Is anybody out there actually still getting updates via Automatic Updates? If so, how are you doing it? My VM is fully patched and it's still not working.

Re: WinXP Updates

smtkr wrote on 2024-11-08, 13:23:

I'm coming in late, but I noticed a number of people recommending SP3

It matters as they're (also) kernel updates and, as SP3 was current for more than any other major version of XP as well as being "tolerated" in the 7/8 age, the one required by many later programs 😀

smtkr wrote on 2024-11-08, 13:23:

I've been running SP1 on my main machine because SP2 and later feel really bloated compared to SP1

While what I just wrote is factually true, so is what you did here 😀 🙁
New features - or even less features, see GNOME 3 - often have a cost (at large not borne by the developers) and are objectively a step down for those who don't want them!

smtkr wrote on 2024-11-08, 13:23:

(can you make Windows Defender disappear with no notifications?).

The "security" center? Yep, open it and find the option to turn off its notification on the classic XP blue sidebar on the left, then you can disable its service like many other optinal ones "automatic" by default, or you can just strip it out with nLite (apply any updates you want first!) if you're building a custom installer anyway 😀

Oh, Defender on XP? At the time I was doing XP updates, I had noticed that Defender was an option. So I let it install on one machine, no problem except that it of course wanted to get the signatures updated. But - Microsoft had already killed off the update service for Defender, so I had no choice but to uninstall it again. Oh well.

The security center is a service that can be disabled, easy. Try the same thing in Vista or later and you still get notifications anyway.

I tried Legacy Update on XP x64 install I used to have, the Windows Update service was just spinning in a loop for hours.