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General Forums => The Soap Box => Topic started by: dedndave on June 19, 2010, 06:19:10 AM

Title: finding old XP hotfixes
Post by: dedndave on June 19, 2010, 06:19:10 AM
i have been collecting some XP-era KB's
some were hard to find - lol
i found this document online that has many hard-to-find links - and for many languages
maybe it can be of use to someone else   :bg

i also found this neat little command-line trick...
wmic qfe list full /format:htable >hotfixes.htm
it creates an HTML of all the hotfixes installed   :bg

WMI looks like it can do a lot of stuff
wmic /?
then, there are qualifiers for more in-depth help
Title: Re: finding old XP hotfixes
Post by: Vortex on June 19, 2010, 10:17:47 AM
Hi Dave,

You would like to look at this project :

http://www.windowsupdatesdownloader.com
Title: Re: finding old XP hotfixes
Post by: dedndave on June 19, 2010, 01:06:42 PM
very cool Erol   :U
too bad they don't have a section for XP Media Center Edition   :(
but, i will definately find it useful

i should mention, the document above also has hotfixes for win98, win2k, xp(32 and 64), server2003(32 and 64)
Title: Re: finding old XP hotfixes
Post by: GregL on June 19, 2010, 03:46:47 PM
Dave,

Regarding WMI, it can be called from MASM (http://www.masm32.com/board/index.php?topic=8358.0) or C.

Usually called from VBScript or JScript. 

As you know, WMIC for command-line.

Lot's of information available from it.
Title: Re: finding old XP hotfixes
Post by: dedndave on June 19, 2010, 04:30:43 PM
yes - i see it even has temperature info
it peeks my curiosity a bit - i wonder what else is in there (like cr/msr and cpuid stuff)
i bet there is even some stuff in there they aren't telling us about   :P
Title: Re: finding old XP hotfixes
Post by: dedndave on October 17, 2011, 02:16:18 AM
i updated my XP MCE2005 "master" build, today
529 hotfixes, total   :lol

what is really funny, is the title they put on the HTML...
Quote"529 Instances of Win32_QuickFixEngineering"
that is straight from the horses mouth
Title: Re: finding old XP hotfixes
Post by: baltoro on October 17, 2011, 07:27:11 PM
DAVE !!!
If you've never used WMI in your code, you will probably find this interesting: CIM Studio (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc181062.aspx).
If you launch this on your machine, the utility will let you browse all WMI classes on your machine,...displaying properties and attributes.
You can invoke this interface in your MASM code,...but, it's not fun,...it's COM.
...Amyway, the available data can be useful in a variety of situations,...
EDGAR,...has posted an example for accessing the WMI interface in assembly language: WMI (http://www.masm32.com/board/index.php?topic=4171.0).
Title: Re: finding old XP hotfixes
Post by: dedndave on October 17, 2011, 08:30:23 PM
yah - but it took me 10 seconds to write the batch file and use WMITools   :P
if i had to use it in a program, i'd be tempted to use CreateProcess and let WMIC do the dirty work   :bg
Title: Re: finding old XP hotfixes
Post by: jj2007 on October 18, 2011, 10:09:32 AM
Wow, Eran, that was a strong first post! Keep up the good work :U

http://www.onlineprnews.com/news/166553-1315303602-secureteamnet-ready-to-secure-silverlight.html

Online PR News – 06-September-2011 –Secuteam.net has been known and regarded as an organization that walks with the pace of the software industry. As soon as a new platform or a new technology comes in Secureteam.net is the first organization to embrace it wholeheartedly and pick all the new features and secure them with a single motto of securing intellectual property and revenue for their clients.

With the recent introduction of Silverlight from Microsoft Secureteam has taken it on themselves to provide wholesome security for Silverlight as new technology is much susceptible to attacks and being hacked as there maybe some areas which are really not covered by the developers or skip their eye in the wake of pressure exerted by the management and meeting deadlines to roll out the software.
Title: Re: finding old XP hotfixes
Post by: hutch-- on October 18, 2011, 10:17:22 AM
Dave,

I have a simple system with XP, I installed XP Sp3 and completely turned OFF Microsoft Update. NAT in the router plus its firewall has been doing the job fine for years. Contrast this with my Win7 64 box when every time I turn the PHUKING thing on, it needs to download another 100 meg of crap. The only things I have installed that requires updates are Thunderbird and the Adobe Acrobat reader, both of which are in-opportune and annoying.
Title: Re: finding old XP hotfixes
Post by: dedndave on October 18, 2011, 01:54:23 PM
i turn off automatic updates, as well   :U
not just for the OS - for every program i install that allows it
for some programs, like yahoo messenger, i disable it by brute force   :P

every now and then - say every six months - i take the time to look at the updates
the way i do it (for the OS) is to go to the update site and let MS analyze my machine
i do not allow them to install the updates, but i copy all the text into a text file and organize it
then, i go and manually download the updates that i want
i change the file date to match the issue date on the site
i install them, which takes some time, but i control the order and i control the re-boots
i zip and store these files - i have all the hotfixes for XP Media Center 2005 on a hard drive
the end result is a build that runs much faster than if you let automatic updates install them

this time, it has been about a year - so i had about 60 updates   :P
Title: Re: finding old XP hotfixes
Post by: sinsi on October 18, 2011, 02:57:28 PM
You two are lunatics, the updates fix security holes too especially in XP.

hutch, I get one bunch of updates for win7 once a month, do you only boot your box once a month? :bg
Title: Re: finding old XP hotfixes
Post by: dedndave on October 18, 2011, 03:27:27 PM
their security fixes do liittle good - lol
they are always a day late and a dollar short
the same can be said for many AV products

my belief is that you cannot effectively "patch" security into an OS - it has to be designed in, from the start
Title: Re: finding old XP hotfixes
Post by: vanjast on October 18, 2011, 06:30:08 PM
Quote from: sinsi on October 18, 2011, 02:57:28 PM
You two are lunatics..
you haven't seen me yet... :bdg
Title: Re: finding old XP hotfixes
Post by: dedndave on October 18, 2011, 08:46:29 PM
i like being a lunatic
it sets me apart from most other people   :bg
well, some other people
Title: Re: finding old XP hotfixes
Post by: dedndave on October 20, 2011, 12:42:23 AM
now, here is one update that i will install immediately (java ver 7 upd 1)
some of the more recent "bad guys" have been dropping through java
about time oracle did something - lol
Title: Re: finding old XP hotfixes
Post by: thesqueakycat on October 29, 2011, 11:38:51 PM
@dedndave

I want to download and update manually but i was forever downloading the right KB# and the wrong version for my computer. how did you sort that out?

Your experience is greatly appreciated.
Title: Re: finding old XP hotfixes
Post by: dedndave on October 30, 2011, 12:18:46 AM
well - i did it the hard way
i went through every one individually - read the docs and all that   :P
about 300 files to go from the bare MCE build to current

i might have used autopatcher - but they do not support MCE, which is different enough from XP to make a job out of it
http://www.autopatcher.com/forums/

what OS are you using ?
Title: Re: finding old XP hotfixes
Post by: AParsons on October 31, 2011, 07:27:44 AM
I prefer to use: https://secunia.com/vulnerability_scanning/personal/

It doesn't show all the different patch's but it does keep all my apps up-to-date.
Title: Re: finding old XP hotfixes
Post by: dedndave on October 31, 2011, 07:59:00 AM
autopatcher doesn't update everything
it analyzes the current state of your machine, then creates a list of all the MS hotfixes required to update it
then, you can run another program that downloads all the KB's for you, directly from MS
another program will install them all
Title: Re: finding old XP hotfixes
Post by: AParsons on October 31, 2011, 06:45:08 PM
I used to use WSUS to patch machines. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsserver/bb332157

From what I remember, I could control what client machines received certain patches or any patch's at all or in a particular language. I haven't run WSUS for some time.
The only downside was that the machine had to part of a domain, which is no real problem, just a time thing. If it was, I would put the client machine in the domain then remove it afterwards.

But I see that being part of a domain could cause problems, or introduce other problems, so autopatcher looks like a good solution to patch non-domain machines.

Title: Re: finding old XP hotfixes
Post by: dedndave on October 31, 2011, 07:16:37 PM
no - don't do that
AutoPatcher is a better way to go
if you use WSUS, your machine will always run like a pig