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"Windows Updated Restored"

Agent Orange said:
Thanks - not clear what happened to that Tom's link.
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Looks like you accidentally added a period at the end of the url. Proper punctuation strikes again!

Reviving Windows update will definitely come in handy, especially for all the bug fixes and what not.
 
I love these. Even though the article goes hard on saying this isn't an excuse for continuing to use 98se in 2023 I couldn't care. It's always been a slog trying to get random bugfixes over the years that were only available through the unofficial service pack (which I still do not recommend due to it ignoring your installation selections) and I know I've complained a few times that mirrors of the older Windows Update portal must exist somewhere. Here it is and it's using the default updater instead of something slightly jank like an alternate update manager (yes I'm looking at you, Irix community)
 
Lutiana said:
Looks like you accidentally added a period at the end of the url. Proper punctuation strikes again!

Reviving Windows update will definitely come in handy, especially for all the bug fixes and what not.
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Thanks for the fix.
 
NeXT said:
I love these. Even though the article goes hard on saying this isn't an excuse for continuing to use 98se in 2023 I couldn't care. It's always been a slog trying to get random bugfixes over the years that were only available through the unofficial service pack (which I still do not recommend due to it ignoring your installation selections) and I know I've complained a few times that mirrors of the older Windows Update portal must exist somewhere. Here it is and it's using the default updater instead of something slightly jank like an alternate update manager (yes I'm looking at you, Irix community)
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I agree, though for me I'd put Win9x on the internet, get all the updates and patches from this site, then promptly remove it from said internet. There's little reason to keep a 9x machine on the internet that outweighs the risks.
 
Windows 9x is so old and unsupported at this point that any risks it once had are now vanishingly small. It can barely even talk to the modern web without lots of headaches. Besides some ancient medical equipment or industrial controllers, nobody has made software that even runs on it in well over a decade.

While I wouldn't expose it directly to unfiltered raw internet, having it behind even a simple NAT router is sufficient.
 
GiGaBiTe said:
nobody has made software that even runs on it in well over a decade.
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;) Technically, people have still been writing programs that "run on it" all along. Win9x is where you find the last versions of MS-DOS after all. ;)

(Make no mistake, I do understand what you're talking about.)
 
GiGaBiTe said:
While I wouldn't expose it directly to unfiltered raw internet, having it behind even a simple NAT router is sufficient.
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At this point just about every home router you get off the shelf or comes from your ISP has the default group of ports setup as blocked unless you deliberately go in and forward them. I remember that was a problem when @home cable and ADSL was first coming online 20 years ago and you had weird news stories like people's mouse cursors moving around the screen on their own but at that time most people were not yet running a router. The popularity of cheap combination switch/routers/access points from D-Link, Netgear and Linksys quickly put an end to that.
Yes though, connecting a 9x machine to a modem and facing the internet directly usually results in some hilarity. When it's not the bruteforce attempts that bring it down it's the sheer number of random services that are just pinging 24/7 that overwhelms the NIC with packets.

Getting the updates is less about patching up for security issues and more about resolving core OS and performance issues that at one time you could patch out but for over 15 years now you couldn't unless you were a power user IMHO. Locating and sequentially installing the select patches is time consuming and risky if you did it wrong. Windows Update is somewhat idiot-proof.
 
I've been using my old DOS, Win9x, Win3.1x For Workgroups, and other assorted old machines on the web for years and never had a single major problem at all with any of them. Even checking the network traffic on them is deader than the Mohave Desert on the cusp of August during a heatwave. The #1 problem I run into on the web is just websites using scripts so big it stalls the browser out. Of course all that stuff is behind a router and correctly configured firewall, and at my new place, messing with more ways to isolate the vintage clients from the modern stuff - more for education than actual necessity.

Honestly, out of the lot, the best for the modern web on the machines I run (8088-80486) DOS is the best thing - just Links Browser for surfing the web (it works with TLS 1.2) and Brutman's utilities for everything else, that's all I need. Plus being able to wipe and rebuild said machine from within Linux using a VM to connect to the HDD makes this stuff a breeze.

3.11 for Workgroups best bet is Opera 3.62 using FrogFind for search. All modern HTTPS type websites won't open in it, and it crashes a lot with a General Protection Fault or Segment Address Fault when it hits a page too big/wacky for it. 95 I've had luck running RetroZilla 2.2 base install with certain tweaks to the profile and so on - I can even use Facebook on it (in low-resource mode), but it's a whole heck of a lot slower with handling the program and some bigger sites than doing the same through Links.

TBH, I'm usually using the internet less and less on any machines now, because the modern web is a pretty boring and banal place for the most part, overrun with advertising and janky algorithms determining the search results. So I'm more interested in making oldschool-style content than looking for someone else's content these days when I'm online.
 
I tried a pair of win98 machines on windowsupdaterestored, but neither worked. They only got to the "Try Again" screen. It seems that IE6 wants to download a VBScript module, but of course Microsoft has removed everything. Because of that I don't get the Active-X message so nothing works. Also there's a really dodgy certificate which the 2nd machine complained about.

As an aside, on the 2nd machine I accidently clicked on Windows Update in the browser, and it actually connected to the Microsoft update site. Again there was no attempt to use Active-X, so it stopped at the "checking your machine" page.
 
The site seems to be working on my Windows 95B machine, and I was able to download some updates for my NT 4.0 Server system as well. I haven't tested it with my various other OSes yet, but I'm really liking it so far.

Various updates did complain on my NT 4 Server that they weren't appropriate for my OS, but all I needed to do was click OK and allowed the others to install.
 
Robbbert said:
I tried a pair of win98 machines on windowsupdaterestored, but neither worked. They only got to the "Try Again" screen. It seems that IE6 wants to download a VBScript module, but of course Microsoft has removed everything. Because of that I don't get the Active-X message so nothing works. Also there's a really dodgy certificate which the 2nd machine complained about.

As an aside, on the 2nd machine I accidently clicked on Windows Update in the browser, and it actually connected to the Microsoft update site. Again there was no attempt to use Active-X, so it stopped at the "checking your machine" page.
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It should work fine on 98. Make sure you accept any certificates and scripts. Of course the certificate is dodgy, this is a homebrew version of windows update! It's safe to accept, though if you're very cautious you can confirm the certificate fingerprint on the discord.

For windows 98 make sure you're using v4 of the update website.
 
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