Legacy Update 1.13.2: Security advisory
Legacy Update 1.13.2 addresses a security issue in the Legacy Update ActiveX control. Please update as soon as possible. See the full changelog at the release page for Legacy Update 1.13.2 .
Legacy Update News
Updates from the Legacy Update project. Get back online, activate, and install updates on your legacy Windows PC.
Latest posts
Legacy Update 1.13.1
Legacy Update 1.13.1 fixes a few bugs introduced in 1.13, and adds workarounds for issues with some Lenovo devices and Intel Macs. It also addresses a potential security issue. See the full changelog at the release page for Legacy Update 1.13.1 .
Legacy Update 1.13
Legacy Update 1.13 improves handling of some edge cases you might run into while using Legacy Update. It includes 23 fixes and improvements (and plenty more small changes). Some highlights: Windows 7 can now get up-to-date faster, thanks to a new feature that can install the Windows 7 Convenience Update Rollup. Multiple bugs in the Windows Vista Service Pack 1 and 2 installers have been worked…
Introducing our improved website
The Legacy Update website has been completely rebuilt. When I started Legacy Update in 2022, I didn’t plan for the website to be much more than a homepage and a copy of the Windows Update web app. Over the years (it’s been a few), we added our Microsoft Download Center Archive , and the Help pages. At a certain point, handling all this content became a bit too much for the basic website I threw…
Windows Server 2008 and 2008 R2 End of Support
Today, Windows Server 2008 and 2008 R2 (based on Windows Vista and 7) finally, truly reach end of support. Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 is the longest supported version of Windows, at 19 years. Behind it is Windows XP and Windows Embedded 2009 at 17 years, and Windows for Workgroups 3.11 at 16 years. Ironically, Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 are known for having the most issues…
Windows Live Essentials Archive
You’ve been asking me for years, and I finally did it. Windows Live Essentials was a suite of free add-on software from Microsoft. It’s a perfect fit into the Windows 7 experience, but it’s been hard to find official download links. Now, we have them easily accessible on a dedicated page: Windows Live Essentials on our Microsoft Download Center Archive
The Download Center Archive is getting some attention
It’s been great to see the positive response to the new Download Center archive. It was shared on Hacker News earlier this week, and was just covered by The Register . (They’ve also positively covered Legacy Update a few times in the past, most recently after we released Legacy Update 1.12 .) I don’t usually talk about these things because money isn’t the point of this project, but I wanted to add…
Microsoft PowerToys and Fun Packs Archive
We now have a dedicated page to download Windows XP PowerToys and Fun Packs. PowerToys includes the power user favorite of Tweak UI, plus TaskSwitch (an Alt-Tab replacement with window thumbnails), and the 3D Windows XP logo screen saver. Fun Packs add extra features to Windows Media Player and Windows Movie Maker. Microsoft PowerToys and Fun Packs on our Microsoft Download Center Archive
Expanding the Download Center Archive
Hi everyone! I’ve been working on a major upgrade to our archive of the Microsoft Download Center. We initially set up our Download Center archive in 2023 to provide an index of data scraped in August 2020 by ArchiveTeam , a community effort that preserves information at risk of being deleted. Microsoft decided to delete thousands of downloads on the flimsy basis that they were signed using the…
Windows 10 End of Support
After 10 years, Windows 10 has reached end of support . Windows 10 is the most widely adopted version of Windows ever, being installed on around 1.3 billion devices. There are some clear concerns users have with upgrading to Windows 11, and many Windows 10 devices are not officially compatible with Windows 11. To help you decide what to do next with your Windows 10 PC, we’ve developed a new guide:…
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 .
Legacy Update 1.12.1
Legacy Update 1.12.1 fixes some issues from 1.12. (Surprisingly few issues for a big rewrite!) More about Legacy Update 1.12
Legacy Update 1.12
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! I annoyed people a few too many times with the automatic restart, so Legacy Update 1.12 adds a new 3-minute…
Workaround for ISP issues
I set up a workaround on the server that should fix Legacy Update being blocked by some ISPs (specifically, I just set up a new subdomain and redirected all Windows Update download traffic through there). If you’ve been running into “Windows Update may be blocked by your firewall or proxy server” or error 8024402F, try again now, it should work. If not, you may need to force Windows Update to grab…
Legacy Update 1.12 – Beta preview
Hi everyone! I’m working on Legacy Update 1.12, where I’ve made a pretty major under-the-hood change. Now seems like a good time to release this for beta testing. I’ve refactored the ActiveX control code to be built with the open-source MinGW compiler, rather than Microsoft’s Visual Studio 2008 (and a bit of 2010, and 2017, and 2022… you can see why I wanted to get rid of this). Windows is heavily…
Issues with antimalware false-positives
Hopefully most of you won’t need to worry about this, but if you’re seeing Legacy Update say it’s been blocked by your firewall, there’s some explanation of why here. We’re doing our best to get this fixed, but it’s been ongoing for 2 months now. Issues with antimalware false-positives
Microsoft broke Windows Update on Windows 7 (again)
Earlier this week, users of Legacy Update started reporting errors when checking for updates on Windows 7. The most common variant of this is error 80728015 . Rather than an error code, some users instead got a very misleading error dialog: Windows Update cannot currently check for updates, because the service is not running. You may need to restart your computer. We determined the cause to be a…
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?
FAQ is now Help
I restructured our FAQ section into a new Help section. It’ll take some time, but I’d really like to build this up to have a bunch of info on all sorts of Windows Update issues. We were already sort of starting to do that, but it was making the “common issues” page way too long! It should be way easier to navigate now. Legacy Update Help
Known issue: Error 80244021 on Windows Vista
Update: The issue has been fixed. If you’re getting error 80244021, please note that this post is outdated. 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