Legacy Update

Appreciate it! Most of the challenge is getting it all to work in Internet Explorer 6 😬

Introducing our improved website

Introducing our improved website: If it seems like nothing has changed, that’s a good thing! I worked hard to build something that’s easier for me to maintain, while making sure everything is just as it was before. It will help us continue to expand our archive and help page resources.

We were under maintenance when you sent this, it’s fixed now. Sorry for the issues!

None 🙂

Introducing our improved website

Introducing our improved website: If it seems like nothing has changed, that’s a good thing! I worked hard to build something that’s easier for me to maintain, while making sure everything is just as it was before. It will help us continue to expand our archive and help page resources.

There is some real irony to Microsoft giving the longest servicing life to Vista/Server 2008, the operating system that has the most issues with servicing. We’ve spent the most time working around issues that only exist in Vista/2008’s rewritten update system. Basically all issues were solved in 7.

Today, Windows Server 2008 and 2008 R2 (based on Windows Vista and 7) finally, truly reach end of support.

Windows Vista and Server 2008 is the longest supported version of Windows, at 19 years. Behind it is Windows XP at 17 years, and Windows for Workgroups 3.11 at 16 years.

Windows Live Essentials - Microsoft Download Center Archive - Legacy Update

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:

The Silverlight logo. It’s like some kind of liquid or ribbon in highly reflective and yet transparent shades of blue.

What is the Silverlight logo supposed to be, anyway?

The Download Center Archive is getting some attention | Adam Demasi Get more from Adam Demasi on Patreon

Just a little update after getting a lot of attention from the Download Center archive v2 launch. Thanks to everyone who helped to spread the word about it!

Legacy Update expands archive of vanished Microsoft downloads Preserving not just updates, but also lots of the now-deleted optional extras Legacy Update was already extremely useful if you chose to disembark from Microsoft's upgrade railroad. Now it's even more so.…

Legacy Update expands archive of vanished Microsoft downloads

Sorry I missed this! Unfortunately there are a handful of “web” installers that rely on servers that have been shut down. We’re working on a custom update server that will let us replace them with full installers. Until then, there are archives you can find on archive.org.

Microsoft PowerToys and Fun Packs - Microsoft Download Center Archive - Legacy Update

We also now have a dedicated page to download Windows XP PowerToys and Fun Packs. PowerToys includes the power user favorite, Tweak UI, plus TaskSwitch (an Alt-Tab replacement), and the 3D Windows logo screen saver. Fun Packs add extra features to Media Player and Movie Maker.

Check them out here:

If you’re not familiar with it, in 2023, I set up an index of free downloads Microsoft deleted from their website. Almost everything they purged has been preserved in the Wayback Machine, but it’s hard to find what you need. This makes it easy to download from a source you can trust.

Expanding the Download Center Archive | Adam Demasi Get more from Adam Demasi on Patreon

Legacy Update has significantly expanded its archive of the Microsoft Download Center all the way back to 2012. It now indexes 41,000 downloads, of which over half have been deleted by Microsoft.

More about what went into this, and what we’re still planning to do:

I vibe this dark theme

Glad it was useful! 💙

A Google AI Overview for the same search query, which opens with “According to market share data from StatCounter Global Stats, Windows 7's global market share was approximately 9.16% in September 2025. This is a significant increase from previous months, though some analysis suggests this surge is due to reporting errors, particularly in Asian markets.” Only at the very end (below the “fold” where you need to click to expand) does it more clearly state the data is flawed: “Technical Note: As Windows 7 is an unsupported operating system, this unexpected rise in market share is likely an anomaly in the data rather than a genuine trend of users returning to the older OS.”

When looking at other data sources, Windows 7 usage continues to go down, not up. Legacy Update also hasn’t seen any changes in its traffic.

The previous screenshot was from DuckDuckGo (GPT-4o). Google does at least recognise that it’s disputed, but doesn’t say so clearly enough for my liking.

A conversation with DuckDuckGo’s AI chat feature. The conversation starts with the search query “windows 7 september 2025”. Assist (DDG’s search summary feature) says that “In September 2025, Windows 7 experienced a surprising resurgence in market share, increasing by tenfold, particularly in Asia, as users began to shift away from Windows 10, which was nearing its end of life. This trend indicates that many users are opting to continue using the older operating system despite its lack of official support since 2020.” I continue the conversation by challenging it on the validity of the data. It searches and then says “The claim is almost certainly invalid - StatCounter reported a large September 2025 jump for Windows 7, but multiple technical analyses and follow-ups flag it as a reporting anomaly […]”.

Just a friendly reminder that, particularly when coming from search result summaries, AI only knows as much as it can glean from sources it deems to be authoritative. Often, those are news outlets that use clickbait, and put writers under pressure to push out articles without much critical thought.

How do I continue receiving updates for Windows 10? - Legacy Update

After 10 years, Windows 10 has reached end of support.

Don’t panic. Your Windows 10 computers will not explode. You will not catch every piece of malware in existence.

You should enrol in ESU, or switch to Windows 11 or Linux, but this is not the end of the world.

Our guide on what to do now:

How do I continue receiving updates for Windows 10? - Legacy Update

Wait, Windows 10 is legacy now? 😳

Windows 10 reaches end of support in a few days’ time, and there’s been an increasing number of questions about what will happen to Windows 10 and Windows Update. We put together a new guide to answer your questions:

The Windows Update v6 website open to its homepage on Windows XP, as preserved by the Windows Update Restored project.

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 updated – so your old Windows can be, too Need – or prefer – an EOL version of Windows? Don't panic! 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.…

Legacy Update updated – so your old Windows can be, too

🌎⬆️ Legacy Update 1.12.1 fixes some issues from 1.12. (Surprisingly few issues for a big rewrite!) github.com/LegacyUpdate...

More on 1.12 in the quoted post below 👇

Screenshot of a Windows 2000 desktop with Start menu, About Windows, and Legacy Update’s System page open. All of them call it Windows Powered, with its own unique logo.

Steam powered? No no, *Windows* powered

Legacy Update: Get back online, activate, and install updates on your legacy Windows PC Getting error 80072EFE when checking for Windows Updates on your old version of Windows? Legacy Update continues support for Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8.1, etc. where Microsoft left off.

Our code signing certificate expires less than 2 weeks from now. We are looking at free/discounted options, but may need to purchase the same certificate again for $369 USD. Your support is appreciated to help us reach this goal and continue working on Legacy Update for another 2 years.

We also added a partial fix for the slowest of all updates - those for .NET Framework. Each update has to go through an extremely slow, wasteful re-optimizing process. If you use the Legacy Update website to install updates, we now use a workaround to defer the optimization until the end.

Legacy Update’s System page shows that the current OS is Windows XP Tablet PC Edition 2005.

My never-ending quest to make every edition of Windows XP and Server 2003 identify itself correctly continues in this release. With some very specific exceptions, it should now always display the most accurate name for the OS. (Blog post still to come about the craziness behind this sometime)

Legacy Update setup dialog says: Restarting Windows Your computer will not be up to date until you restart it. Please save any open files, photos or documents and restart now. Setup will resume after restarting. Your computer may restart several times to complete installation. Restarting in 02:17 [Restart] [Later]

I annoyed people a few too many times with the automatic restart, so Legacy Update 1.12 adds a new 3-minute countdown. This also lets you choose to restart later. A bug with it incorrectly thinking a restart is needed on Windows 10/11 (sorry!) is also fixed.

Release 1.12 · LegacyUpdate/LegacyUpdate ImportantIf nothing happens when you open Legacy Update setup on Windows XP, follow these steps to work around a Windows bug. Legacy Update 1.12 features a significant rewrite of our ActiveX contr...

🌎⬆️ 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!