Legacy Update updated – so your old Windows can be, too Legacy Update is a third-party Windows Update client which can update old, unsupported versions of Windows, from Windows 10 and 11 all the way back to Windows 2000. And now, Legacy Update version 1.12 is here, with a significant rewrite of one component to make it smaller and faster. It can fetch and install all the available …
I have a few XP VMs which seems to be permanently activated.
I have a physical Win7-Pro, that I build myself with an OEM license. It only had a few small hardware changes since 2010(?), but I have been wanting to change the system disk (clone to SSD), in which case I suspect Windows will want to re-activate. Does anyone have any experince with that in 2025?
(Yes, it could have moved to Win10, but that is mooh now anyway.)
(None of these are normally near the internet.)
> Win7-Pro,.....wanting to change the system disk (clone to SSD), in which case I suspect Windows will want to re-activate. Does anyone have any experince with that in 2025?
Not since 2023 but I suspect it has not changed. My 2015 Win7 PC's rotary rust was past 7 years and experience says that's risky. I put in a Crucial MX500 1TB SSD and used the software to clone the old drive. Swapped connectors, knocked wood, booted right up no complaint and FAST. IIRC you "can" change one or two things without re-authorizing. And I've always heard that MS phone support(*) will authorize any live body. And apparently after the O/S "expires"--- say it is a medical X-ray machine and you don't dare change the O/S.
> M$ need to release LTSC products as standard items.
Not likely.
"It breaks all the time so you need to constantly fix it" _is the business model now._ And the development model too.
Windows is not suitable for things like embedded deployment. But people kept doing it, partly because MS always planned to put "a computer on every desk" and make sure that most people didn't know anything else except MS products. It did this. Most don't. So they use the MS products for things they're not suitable for at all. Like cash machines, say, or big expensive medical equipment.
You want safe solid and long term? Use QNX or something. But that's expensive and needs expensive developers, so the companies don't. They do whatever bullshit is cheap enough and minimally viable. Get to market first, sell enough, retire or move on.
So, MS bowed to the inevitable and did a slow-moving "enterprise LTS" version of Windows. LTSC is the RHEL of Windows. And how do you make that pay? Make it eye-wateringly expensive.
#1 It helps pay for itself.
#2 Only helps. It doesn't actually pay enough. But it keeps the market position safe. That pays. So it's worth it.
#3 So the proles don't use it. Important: don't derail the gravy train.
Use the server versions. I just switched my main machine to Server 2025 two weekends ago. All others have been running Server 2019 / 2022 for a long time. Now all my machines are running the "actual professional" Windows version...
Would not have done a new install if 24h2 would not have f-ed itself up the DISM. Was originally installed 2011, upgraded all along, several hardware changes, and then 24h2 DISM bitchyness + the fear of "of f- more AI crap coming?" made me switch instead of pulling the restore-from-backup.
I even made Cooledit 2000 running again as before, without it complaining, and registered. Not an easy task. Maybe I should make that an auto-package...
The in-place "upgrade" from Windows 10 to the LTSC edition works very well, if not exactly fast. I've now successfully updated four PCs and everything works well. It even retains your language settings even though the LTSC edition is US english only.
Of course I took a disk image of each one before the upgrade, just in case...
Worked for me too thanks to massgrave.dev. I was a bit worried about the LTSC IOT version being US-only but the activation tool, HWID, provided on the massgrave,dev website switched the locale to US, coverted LTSC to LTSC IOT and then switched the locale back to GB! Done this on a desktop, a laptop and two VMs. The in-place upgrade did not work on an old laptop on which Windows Update had never worked. Best to make a copy of the system disk first - just in case.
I now have support that will last for about ten years.
Phil.
So, for the coming year, it sounds like one might consider using Legacy Update instead of paying $30 for Extended Security Updates (ESU)? I wonder how different the experience would be of using LU instead of ESU. I'm mostly on Linux (ever since w10 was pushed), but I do actually have 2 w10 boxes--neither of which is worth more than $30. One is for an app (that just might get used one day), and the other is for the fam's pc game pass.
For CNCs and their ilk in particular, it can happen even when the machine uses "generic"/COTS software. Where I work we have two parallel port CNCs which are operated using Mach III (one of the more popular CNC control software). Due to how it uses the parallel port (it seemingly bypasses Windows' parallel port driver and bitbangs away), it cannot run beyond Windows XP 32 bit (it will flat out not run on 64 bit OSes, and will bluescreen on Windows 7[a] 32bit and beyond). There is a newer version (creatively named Mach IV), but it cannot drive parallel port machines (only networked and "USB-native" ones).
We are currently acquiring a third CNC (significantly more precise than the two we currently own), but the "vendor"[b] still uses parallel port interfaces (disguised by an integrated USB to parallel interface). They have offered to give us the CNC with Linux-CNC, but last I've heard they had unspecified problems with it (I know for a fact Linux-CNC can drive the two machines we currently own, but "we" desisted on using it back then due to operator familiarity and lack of calibration parameters).
[a]: It supposedly works up to a certain patch level/SP, but in 2025 it's about the same as running XP.
[b]: Which I shall charitably describe as a local COTS parts integrator/validator. Damn cheap tho, and the machines are much more precise than what their intended use is (carpentry; not our use case).
ISTR that, not too long ago, there was a business still using an IBM 402 accounting machine and punch cards.
Sometimes the cost of moving to the new shiny version of Windows is not just the cost of updating the OS. There are businesses that depend on software written by companies that no longer exist, for older versions of Windows. Sure, in the best of all worlds, they would upgrade, but real life doesn't always work that way.
If it works, don't fix it.
I recall working in a factory back in 2012 with a few elderly lab analysers hooked to PC's that were still running Windows NT 3.1.
Fast forward to 2018 and all the lab machines at another place were still running Windows XP on Core2Duo machines and had been since their introduction in 2007, simply because rewriting the in-house software to work on anything newer like Windows 7 would have taken a lot of resource the client supplying it simply didn't have.
In the latter case all the computers lived in a cleanroom, so nice temperature control and filtered air.
Very little stress on their components and when we finally replaced them two years later they were still more or less spotless inside - they could easily be going today barring any major component failure.
I plan on using Windows XP for very old games that don't work with Windows 10 or Windows 11. Because Microsoft doesn't provide proper backward compatibility for 25 year old games. But that can be understandable for most part. But they also make running older operating systems really difficult.
Thank you for the hint! I was among the lucky (?) who made a pool of Win2k/XP/2003 VMs end 2018, when WU still worked. After "a few" preparations even Windows 2000 started to automatically download updates and showed "I've got updates!" in the taskbar, event though i never managed to get the WU website to work.
Now I have to check how many are offered for the NT 4.0 install, where I only got the updates 'cause someone at a German university hosted them all, including the right order to install, in German and English... And I used the "Universal VBE" driver to get usable GFX.
The NT 3.51 VM came later, and I cannot take credit for install since I converted the VMWare install from winwordpc to Hyper-V including working network adapter. It still says "a service could not be started" since I never managed to fix that after the conversion - whatever hardware is missing, the service (which is for NT the same as a driver, up to including Server 2025) tries to start and fails.
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