Vista question

[Hoody]

OK, so its an old OS, , I got hold of an old Toshiba laptop from a friend, at first he just wanted me to re do it for him, somehow his video got hosed and the screen was stuck on black. So OK, had to go through some hoops, cause there was no recover/restore partition, and no recovery disks, OK, got hold of a Vista ISO, burned it, and went through the install, luckily his key was still viable on the unit and it activated OK, got it all back up and running.

Now, the question I have is does MS still update this OS?

I tried for 3 days to get WU to do "something" it just sits and spins its wheels, nothing ever shows up. I thought maybe its the install, so re re installed, same, OK, so maybe its the ISO, got another ISO, installed, and same thing. So OK, went through all kinds of WU "fixes", (yes every damned one several times) and still nothing. So I just recovered the last image I made that was working fine except the updates thing and decided to let it go at this point.

Everything else seems to be working fine for an older OS. So any idea's? or has MS decided to close down the servers for this?

BTW I know they had said that security support was still available till Apr 2017, if so something should show up. I ran Belrac, and it found 166 updates???????.

 

[Norton]

I still have an XP (notebook) machine. It runs great with no MS support, no problems with a good real time antivirus program and Malwarebytes. Nothing seems to get through. If It does I have an image or return to OEM install. My wife uses it in the kitchen for recipes LOL. I did install Pale Moon Browser DuckDuckGO search engine on my XP and Win 7 machines. Pale Moon (Mozilla product) is an excellent browser, safe and very fast, if not faster than Chrome and Edge.

 

[Trouble]

Not sure where you are at with your Vista install, but...
Check and confirm that you are at least SP2
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/13858/windows-vista-service-pack-2-install
IF not there is a link in there to manually download it... (32 or 64 bit version).

EDIT: From what I can determine you have 8 more months.
Extended support looks to end 4/11/2017, which I think means you should be good for any security updates, hotfixes and patches up until then.
OF course no new features or functionality is being added any more.
SOURCE: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us...x?sort=PN&alpha=Windows vista&Filter=FilterNO

 

[Jake B]

I still have an XP (notebook) machine. It runs great with no MS support, no problems with a good real time antivirus program and Malwarebytes. Nothing seems to get through. If It does I have an image or return to OEM install. My wife uses it in the kitchen for recipes LOL. I did install Pale Moon Browser DuckDuckGO search engine on my XP and Win 7 machines. Pale Moon (Mozilla product) is an excellent browser, safe and very fast, if not faster than Chrome and Edge.

The danger with unsupported OS's is dangerous code can sneak in and the virus or malware software doesn't know it's there.

 

[Hoody]

@Trouble yeah, its SP2, I checked that first off, even tried to install both SP1 and 2 with a separate Disk just to verify that they were already installed.

As for updates, I'm not so much concerned about them as long as its not the OS or machine that's keeping them from being D/Led, so if its on MS server side, hell with it, I installed COMODO both av and fw for that. I'll let it sit on update another day or so, than maybe ask my neighbor to let me hook it up to his Xfinity cable and see if a different isp and higher speed does anything.

Iits a nice little lappy, probably worth around 200 still Its not a speed demon, its just a Toshiba Sat, with 2g ram, and a 200G HD heck this old thing even has 8 USB ports lol.

 

[Trouble]

I installed COMODO both av and fw for that

Make sure the firewall component isn't blocking anything.
AND
Fire Windows Updates up manually and let it set and run over-night. See if anything comes down that way.
Even doing a 7 clean install now can turn into a nightmare trying to get the updates to do anything except look like it's searching forever.

 

[Hoody]

Make sure the firewall component isn't blocking anything.
AND
Fire Windows Updates up manually and let it set and run over-night. See if anything comes down that way.
Even doing a 7 clean install now can turn into a nightmare trying to get the updates to do anything except look like it's searching forever.

Nothing blocked, I even tried the updates right after the freash install without adding anything to the OS. Its a real strange thing.

 

[Norton]

The danger with unsupported OS's is dangerous code can sneak in and the virus or malware software doesn't know it's there.

Jake that couldn't that happen on any machine?
The point I was trying to make is, I saved the PC from going to the recyclers, and just because MS doesn't support XP any longer, it isn't the end of life for XP OS. XP is still a pleasure to use.

 

[Defender01]

I have a Dell lap top running vista and it has Windows Defender running.
Defender still gets updates for this pc and os updates do arrive but not often.
Which is why i never have any problems with its running.
Its never turned off has been running almost continually for the last three years apart from when i reboot after doing a routine clean up.

 

[Jake B]

Jake that couldn't that happen on any machine?
The point I was trying to make is, I saved the PC from going to the recyclers, and just because MS doesn't support XP any longer, it isn't the end of life for XP OS. XP is still a pleasure to use.

Any machine without security updates is more susceptible to attacks no matter what OS you have.But even then the best defense to attack is smart surfing.

 

[Trouble]

best defense to attack is smart surfing.

I would think that the "best defense" on a Windows XP machine would be NO surfing.
The native browser is too old and you can't update it.
I'm pretty sure that even Chrome has discontinued support for XP.
That might leave you with Firefox (IDK) or some other third party browser.
I suppose you could load it up with Anti Virus / Anti Malware software and roll the dice

 

[Norton]

Trouble I agree with you on browsing. Very little surfing is done on the machine and the personal files have been removed. The native browser(IE) was replaced with Pale Moon (Mozilla) browser which does perform updates, Antivirus installed is Avira, malware protection is Malwarebytes Pro. I hate to toss out stuff that can still provide useful service. It's handy to take on the road too, better than lugging around a 6lb Dell Inspiron 1545. LOL

 

[Jake B]

Trouble I agree with you on browsing. Very little surfing is done on the machine and the personal files have been removed. The native browser(IE) was replaced with Pale Moon (Mozilla) browser which does perform updates, Antivirus installed is Avira, malware protection is Malwarebytes Pro. I hate to toss out stuff that can still provide useful service. It's handy to take on the road too, better than lugging around a 6lb Dell Inspiron 1545. LOL

https://www.palemoon.org/PM_end_of_WinXP_support.shtml

 

[Norton]

Jake Thanks for looking after my best interest. I'm currently running the 26.4 version (Atom/Win/XP) also Firefox is on the machine.
Norton