Preparing for the inevitable End of Support

This is an issue that will eventually hit all who browse here.

*** When will MS terminate support of WinME? ***

In the past I have resuscitated and put some life into old machines (e.g., Win95, Pentium 1, 16MB ram) by just reinstalling the original operating system and rounding it out with modern lightweight apps (eg Opera for both browsing and email, AbiWord, etc.). The mess was moving from IE 4 to IE 5.5 (6 was out of the question!!) so MS would talk to me online at all. I had to scavenge old magazine insert CDs and then cruise the net for the few missing bits required for Opera. All went fine, but it took some trying.

I'd rather avoid such a mess.
I want to allow my WinME comp to have
a long and productive old age without going
the OS upgrade route.

To do so I'd like to collect all the updates
up to the cutoff date,
as to be able to apply them to a fresh install if needs be.

This will be necessary after ME gets barred from Windows Update.

Ideally, I'd love to put together a 1-CD collection of all updates.

- Is it possible?

- How do I go about doing it?

- Is there a good howto somewhere?

TIA for any hints!

 

Theoretically all Critical updates for all Windows systems should remain for download at this site indefinitely, even after the support period is over.
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/downloads/critical/default.asp

 

>> This method applies to all OS's.

I didn't know that - hence my similar postings for WinME and Win98!

For about 3.5 seconds I even thought Christer had been rude in closing my other thread....

Thank you!

 

Oooops!

Anyway, whoever did it, was right!

 

Hey Christer,

*There might be updates which can not be uninstalled and in consequence not on Your list. How to identify them might be difficult.*

I think you forgot, there is an option on the regular (on the fly) update site to list/print your download history.

Regards - Charles

 

Hi Christer,

Actually, for the sake of accuracy, its "installation" history on the install only site and "download" history on the catalog site.

Regards - Charles

 

Hi Christer,

* "Installed Programs" and there´s a list of everything that has ever been installed. I believe that every update is listed, from wherever it came.*

Belarc will do the same http://www.belarc.com/Download.html

I have a "fetish" about cross-checking

Regards - Charles

 

Hi Christer,

A question of listing hotfixes/MS patches came up in this thread http://www.windowsbbs.com/showthread.php?threadid=24828

What I found is that Belarc does not list all of MS's patches, just the critical ones. I'm going to go thru the execise with Aida later today.

Regards - Charles

 

Just came across this MS article which may be helpful
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=fh;EN-US;w98

 

Hi Christer,

*What I found is that Belarc does not list all of MS's patches, just the critical ones. I'm going to go thru the execise with Aida later today.*

I take that back, was looking at a list 6 months out of date. Belarc lists them all, matches my stored MS patch folder plus the one I did a download/install for. It lists the qfecheck command line hot fix checker as Q324720 as well(??).

So in this category, Belarc (latest version) wins over aida32 - latest version.

Aida lists only the hotfixes, while qfecheck, MS's checker lists only hotfixes excluding IE and Media patches.

Regards - Charles