How to Update Windows XP After End of Support

Here's the POS updates I got for June 10th 2014

• Security Update for WEPOS and POSReady 2009 (KB2957503)
• Security Update for WEPOS and POSReady 2009 (KB2939576)
• Cumulative Security Update for Internet Explorer 8 for WEPOS and POSReady 2009
  (KB2957689)
• Security Update for WEPOS and POSReady 2009 (KB2957509)

And then the XP update

• Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool - June 2014 (KB890830)

Again, I wouldn't rely on this trick to protect your XP box. I'm just posting these for anyone curious.

 

Anybody tried this on VirtualBox? Every time I access the shared folders for the first time since startup, it freezes Windows Explorer for some minutes. Then it works fine...

*Seems to affect all network connections, including Internet Explorer. Some network-related services startup slower than before.

 

Got tired of the bug, not as if updates matter to a VirtualBox guest at this point (especially since they don't fix the problem). Back to my old copy without the registry hack.

 

This is really good stuff guys! So great to have further updates to allow XP to die off more "naturally" over the next years instead of being left more vulnerable and hoping other solutions can cover us.

I guess I had really been out of the loop (had hardly checked Wilders last couple months) since I just accidentally saw a Google result mentioning this trick about 10 days ago. After doing a happy dance, I had to investigate more myself, especially after seeing issues alluded to here and doubts about the updates' validity.

Most importantly, the response/warning from Microsoft is 100% lies! (99.99% at least if you want to cut them some slack for future possibilities.) Absolutely disgusting statements: "Significant risk of functionality issues?" Umm, NO, nothing should (will) change in the future. These are 100% legit and complete updates.

Why? Because there has never, ever been any difference between the "normal" and Embedded XP updates! I now present the results of my complete and thorough investigation. If you search the Update Catalog for "XP Embedded," you'll see that prior to May, there are only 21 updates for XP Embedded. 20 of those came between Aug. and Oct. 2010 -- what's significant about that? That's between when support ended for "normal" XP SP2 (July 2010) and Embedded XP SP2 (Jan. 2011). (Not sure what happened to Nov-Dec...)

The simple summary? The ONLY reason those separate updates exist for Embedded is to support installation on SP2 (after "normal" updates became SP3-only). ALL other updates before and after (except one oddball...) are shared because they're the SAME. And the SP3 files in those "interim" Embedded updates are... the same. The details:

These SP3 updates are identical between "normal" and Embedded:
10-047 (KB981852)
10-050 (KB981997)
10-054 (KB982214)
10-061 (KB2347290)
10-063 (KB981322)
10-073 (KB981957)

These SP3 updates were not identical and had different times, so I disassembled them and it's only the internal timestamp and checksum that differ, but the code is identical:
10-046 (KB2286198 )
10-049 (KB980436)
10-051 (KB2079403)
10-052 (KB2115168 )
10-055 (KB982665)
10-068 (KB982000) [ADAM]
10-069 (KB2121546)
10-074 (KB2387149) [Unnecessary]
10-078 (KB2279986)
10-081 (KB2296011)
10-084 (KB2360937)

That's 17 of them. Then we have 10-048 (KB2160329) for win32k.sys where the Embedded version is a day or two and 1 version older (.6002 vs .6003) with small code difference. e.g. After the next win32k.sys update they were again identical.

The last 2 (of 20) are WMP updates. They both appear to ONLY be for SP2 (see update.inf SP req.), so SP3 would be shared with "normal" XP. But:
10-062 (KB975558 ) - WMP 8(?), 10-11 are identical. WMP 9 code is basically the same, effectively
10-082 (KB2378111) - WMP 10-11 identical; WMP 9 Embedded wmp.dll version older/smaller (4.51 vs 4.66 MB). Again, this is really a SP2 vs SP3 difference.


Then the one from 8/29/2012 (#21), 12-034 (KB2686509), keyboard layout vulnerability. I already saw elsewhere that the Embedded update contains kblCheckerE.dll instead of kblChecker.dll. All that file does is check some stuff before allowing the update (NOT that file) to "install." I say "install" because I never installed it as it doesn't seem to do anything (e.g. no files or special registry entries), which I really noticed after checking. Note: Its update.inf DOES check for a ProductSuite of EmbeddedNT!

Anyway (unrelated to Embedded), I discovered that update is needed! (Or at least the usual registry key(s) that indicate Installed.) The updated win32k.sys from a separate, corresponding update back then actually checks if the HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Updates\Windows XP\SP4\KB2686509 key exists, which is extremely weird! (e.g. simple key from another update instead of a new reg. value in a typical location to control behavior.) Well, now I finally know.


In conclusion, of course the updates are identical, and should (will) continue to be, because there's NO reason for them to be different. The Embedded restrictions are entirely artificial! So the most they could do is make the installation checks harder or require something besides POSReady, etc. for Windows Update scans to work. However, they can't change the fact that the OS files should (will) be the same, which can always be installed using an older (current) version of update.exe, or even manually...

I'll be back later to reply to a few posts in this thread. Not sure why anyone might have had issues after adding POSReady, unless the Windows Update Client stuff is acting different (besides the obvious) or changing other stuff somehow? Because we know it isn't the updates themselves. Maybe see if the same issues are caused after adding POSReady, but NOT installing any of the updates yet?

 

Thank you for this thorough examination of the updates. I have been using them since May and this makes me even more assured that they are no different.

 

Same scenario here, other than I secure it differently than Pete's. Otherwise no concerns whatsoever.

 

I found out which update is causing the bug: KB2931365. Uninstalled .NET Framework 4.

 

Interesting. So it wasn't related to this POSReady trick at all? (I think your report(s) were mostly what I wondered about...) It's just .NET 4 in VirtualBox acting weird...?

I say that since this isn't XP-specific (for a possible difference between normal and Embedded), as the same .NET update is used across all Windows versions. Although who knows... I've never actually installed any of the .NET updates so far, although I was intended to include the critical type ones for it!

 

The update did not appear until I applied the POSReady trick.

 

Right, because it came out in May...

But I'm saying that the update is FOR .NET Framework, NOT Windows (be it XP or 7), so a problem shouldn't be CAUSED by the POSReady trick, from what I can surmise. I just checked, and you can download the separate update from the Download Center and it's exactly the same as for XP Embedded (e.g. no check for Embedded, it applied to plain XP system fine just now). Same checksum as downloaded from the Embedded Update Catalog.

So, if you want to check and see if I'm right or not (e.g. NOT a POSReady problem), just download that linked update, and apply it to your VirtualBox install without the POSReady change. I think you'll see the same behavior? Heck, maybe you would even if it was installed on another version of Windows!

Oh, but the download from the Update Catalog (so also auto Windows Update?) also has a "msipatchregfix" ("Patch Registration Clean up Utility") file along with it -- whatever that does. I see some old references to it, but nothing that says what it's for. Doesn't seem like anything major, however.

 

I know what you're saying, but wouldn't bother to replicate. There is a relationship though, and I'm surprised at being the only one who reported it.

 

I have tried this trick, and managed to download various security updates. I did avoid this one as mentioned above (KB2931365), and my computer doesn't seem any worse off than before. However, I managed to miss about 8 or 9 updates, which are listed in my update history as being either failed or cancelled. (The computer seemed to freeze while trying to download these, so I either cancelled, or turned off the machine). Just to be clear, I am running Windows XP. Now, is there any way that I can try to download the updates that I have missed? They don't appear again as being available for downloading, only in the update history.

 

There is a program that is called something like "windows update download program" that downloads the XP patches from microsoft technet where they still are present.

 

Here you go:
https://app.box.com/s/lwfwd77nw0ctrdi7hnai/1/1965695776

Just select your language and then download the whole folder. I found that downloading them individually didn't work, but the whole folder works fine.

 

Thanks Itsnow. Could I install all of them, even though I will be reinstalling some that have already been installed?

 

I don't see why not.