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Reposted by Legacy Update

Legacy Update @legacyupdate.net · 9d

So long, Windows Update website 🫡

This week, Microsoft took down the old Windows Update v6 web app entirely. It was a time capsule locked in the Microsoft.com design from 2005. It’s been broken since 2021.

You can still see it preserved through Windows Update Restored.

The Windows Update v6 website open to its homepage on Windows XP, as preserved by the Windows Update Restored project.

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Legacy Update @legacyupdate.net · 9d

So long, Windows Update website 🫡

This week, Microsoft took down the old Windows Update v6 web app entirely. It was a time capsule locked in the Microsoft.com design from 2005. It’s been broken since 2021.

You can still see it preserved through Windows Update Restored.

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Reposted by Legacy Update

The Register @theregister.com · 12d

Legacy Update updated – so your old Windows can be, too

Need – or prefer – an EOL version of Windows? Don't panic! Legacy Update is a third-party Windows Update client which can update old, unsupported versions of Windows, from Windows 10 and 11 all the way back to Windows 2000.…

dlvr.it

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Legacy Update @legacyupdate.net · 12d

🌎⬆️ Legacy Update 1.12.1 fixes some issues from 1.12. (Surprisingly few issues for a big rewrite!) github.com/LegacyUpdate...

More on 1.12 in the quoted post below 👇

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Legacy Update @legacyupdate.net · 16d

Steam powered? No no, *Windows* powered

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Legacy Update @legacyupdate.net · 17d

Our code signing certificate expires less than 2 weeks from now. We are looking at free/discounted options, but may need to purchase the same certificate again for $369 USD. Your support is appreciated to help us reach this goal and continue working on Legacy Update for another 2 years.

Legacy Update: Get back online, activate, and install updates on your legacy Windows PC

Getting error 80072EFE when checking for Windows Updates on your old version of Windows? Legacy Update continues support for Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8.1, etc. where Microsoft left off.

legacyupdate.net

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Legacy Update @legacyupdate.net · 17d

We also added a partial fix for the slowest of all updates - those for .NET Framework. Each update has to go through an extremely slow, wasteful re-optimizing process. If you use the Legacy Update website to install updates, we now use a workaround to defer the optimization until the end.

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Legacy Update @legacyupdate.net · 17d

My never-ending quest to make every edition of Windows XP and Server 2003 identify itself correctly continues in this release. With some very specific exceptions, it should now always display the most accurate name for the OS. (Blog post still to come about the craziness behind this sometime)

Legacy Update’s System page shows that the current OS is Windows XP Tablet PC Edition 2005.

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Legacy Update @legacyupdate.net · 17d

I annoyed people a few too many times with the automatic restart, so Legacy Update 1.12 adds a new 3-minute countdown. This also lets you choose to restart later. A bug with it incorrectly thinking a restart is needed on Windows 10/11 (sorry!) is also fixed.

Legacy Update setup dialog says:

Restarting Windows
Your computer will not be up to date until you restart it. Please save any open files, photos or documents and restart now.
Setup will resume after restarting. Your computer may restart several times to complete installation.
Restarting in 02:17
[Restart] [Later]

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Legacy Update @legacyupdate.net · 17d

🌎⬆️ Legacy Update 1.12 is a huge rewrite release. We switched from compiling with Visual C++ 2008 (and 2010, and 2017, and 2022…), a setup which Microsoft recently broke, to a streamlined open-source MinGW/GCC toolchain. The result: 1.12 is 50% smaller than 1.11, which was already below 1 MB!

Release 1.12 · LegacyUpdate/LegacyUpdate

ImportantIf nothing happens when you open Legacy Update setup on Windows XP, follow these steps to work around a Windows bug. Legacy Update 1.12 features a significant rewrite of our ActiveX contr...

github.com

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Legacy Update @legacyupdate.net · 18d

root: boring, not scary at all, can just access it with sudo

NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM: loud, asserts dominance, requires service hacks to access, shows The System is in charge

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Legacy Update @legacyupdate.net · Jul 14

Last week, apparently because a broken update was pushed, every running Windows Server on the planet with WSUS installed went and re-synced their entire database, causing a DDoS of Microsoft’s WSUS servers. Not a good past few weeks for Windows Update!

Microsoft confirms Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) sync is broken

Microsoft has confirmed a widespread issue in Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) that prevents organizations from syncing with Microsoft Update and deploying the latest Windows updates.

www.bleepingcomputer.com

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Legacy Update @legacyupdate.net · Jul 4

Microsoft fixed the expired file, and updating Windows 7 and 8 works once more (8.1 wasn’t affected). The new version of the file expires in 2033.

I wrote up a post-mortem of what happened, for anyone curious:

Microsoft broke Windows Update on Windows 7 (again)

A configuration file expired, again.

adamdemasi.com

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Legacy Update @legacyupdate.net · Jul 4

Microsoft fixed the expired file, and updating Windows 7 and 8 works once more (8.1 wasn’t affected). The new version of the file expires in 2033.

I wrote up a post-mortem of what happened, for anyone curious:

Microsoft broke Windows Update on Windows 7 (again)

A configuration file expired, again.

adamdemasi.com

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Legacy Update @legacyupdate.net · Jul 2

We’ve added a more detailed error message for anyone who gets stuck at the 80248015 error this is causing, as well as a button to disable Microsoft Update to at least get Windows updates going again:

A Legacy Update “Information” page in Internet Explorer 8 on Windows 7:

There is a temporary service issue with Microsoft Update.

Due to a configuration file that has expired, it is currently not possible to check for updates from the Microsoft Update service.

We expect that Microsoft will issue a new version of the configuration file in the coming days. If this does not happen, Legacy Update will develop a workaround.

To use Windows Update at this time, you will need to disable Microsoft Update. If disabled, you will not receive updates for other Microsoft software, such as Office, Visual Studio, and SQL Server. You can reinstall Legacy Update to enable Microsoft Update again.

Button: [Disable Microsoft Update]

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Legacy Update @legacyupdate.net · Jul 2

Getting an error that the Windows Update service isn’t running, or is Microsoft Update not being enabled for you on Windows 7, 8, or 8.1? Microsoft just let a config file expire… *again*. It took 2 days for them to fix it in 2017 🤷‍♀️

We’re monitoring and will take action if they don’t fix it soon.

Microsoft Update authorization expired on Windows 7 - 8.1 · Issue #369 · LegacyUpdate/LegacyUpdate

Spotted by @renodr: As of 2025-07-01, midnight UTC, the Microsoft Update service has expired and is no longer eligible to be enabled on Windows 7, most likely also 8 and 8.1, and possibly early 10 ...

github.com

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Legacy Update @legacyupdate.net · Jun 28

What is going on with Windows Update and drivers?

A fair few people asked me what is going on with Microsoft’s recent announcement that drivers will be deleted from Windows Update, so I wrote up some notes about it:

What is going on with Windows Update and drivers?

Well-intentioned but poorly communicated.

adamdemasi.com

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Legacy Update @legacyupdate.net · Jun 21

The backup of driver metadata we made a few months ago will come in handy after all. Thanks to some generous community members who have lent me some storage space, I might be able to pull a mirror of the driver files themselves. How much of it I can pull really hugely depends. Will update soonish.

Legacy Update @legacyupdate.net · Apr 19

It’s done. Final database size: 138 GB. 15 days, just as I estimated.

Well, this is proof of why Microsoft wanted to remove drivers from WSUS. The whole WSUS 3.x product, which is almost as old as Vista, is not aging well.

No idea how we’ll upload an archive of this, but I’ll find a way.

The finished result with WSUS and the SQL Server data folder open.
SUSDB.mdf is 138GB. WSUS lists 1,799,339 unapproved updates and 2,835 declined. Last sync was 2025-19-04 1:36 PM (2 hours before this post).
System uptime: 15 days, 18 hours, 31 minutes.

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Legacy Update @legacyupdate.net · Jun 21

Well, of course we’re not at the end of the Windows Update drivers saga. Like I’ve said before, I strongly believe this is to do with WSUS struggling with a huge database. Security is just a convenient additional benefit. Still a legitimate one though - old vulnerable drivers can be used by malware.

Microsoft to remove legacy drivers from Windows Update for security boost

Microsoft has announced plans to periodically remove legacy drivers from the Windows Update catalog to mitigate security and compatibility risks.

www.bleepingcomputer.com

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Legacy Update @legacyupdate.net · May 29

Maybe you mean flatpak? Snap actually very nicely lays things out in /snap, while you need to use `flatpak run` to correctly launch a flatpak app. Don’t know why Microsoft make it hard to find the actual exe path, but at least like flatpak run, you can launch them via an explorer.exe command.

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Legacy Update @legacyupdate.net · May 29

Microsoft Store should have been so much more than it is. It should have become the no-brainer way you get apps on Windows.

Users still don’t trust it, even though the experience is so slick and keeps your OS clean.

Focus on improving the Store, and Windows’ perception as a whole will improve.

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Legacy Update @legacyupdate.net · May 29

This might seem huge, but I’ll point out that Microsoft already opened Windows Update to 3rd party apps 12 years ago. It’s called the Microsoft Store, and it uses Windows Update on the backend.

This really rather shows Microsoft is terrible at convincing developers and users what’s good for them.

Microsoft wants Windows Update to handle all apps

A dream come true for IT admins

www.theverge.com

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Legacy Update @legacyupdate.net · May 24

Update update: We found a workaround yesterday. Very weird issue on our end with compression of responses on our server. We disabled compression for now - will enable it again once we understand what the problem was.

More details here if you’re curious:

80244021 on Windows Vista · Issue #360 · LegacyUpdate/LegacyUpdate

Starting on May 20, Legacy Update is completely non-functional on Vista, both Legacy Update and Windows Update give the error code 80244021. This appears to only affect Vista, XP and 7 are unaffected.

github.com

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Legacy Update @legacyupdate.net · May 23

Using Legacy Update on Vista or Server 2008 and getting error 80244021? Don’t worry, it’s not just you. We’re looking into what we can do to fix it.

I’ll be posting updates as we learn more about the issue here:

80244021 on Windows Vista · Issue #360 · LegacyUpdate/LegacyUpdate

Starting on May 20, Legacy Update is completely non-functional on Vista, both Legacy Update and Windows Update give the error code 80244021. This appears to only affect Vista, XP and 7 are unaffected.

github.com

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Legacy Update @legacyupdate.net · Apr 24

The Microsoft Vulnerable Driver Blocklist, known for such hits as breaking your crappy RGB drivers, includes an Asus driver named AsHitIo_Drv.sys, or as Microsoft calls it, ASHITIO

Screenshot of the driver blocklist XML file in Visual Studio Code (SiPolicy_Enforced.xml). Highlighted is a line for “Asus AsHitIo_Drv FileAttribute”, which blocks a driver named AsHitIo_Drv.sys between version 0.0.0.0 and 27.0.0.0.

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