problem Accessing HDD Recovery Vista Home Premium SP2

Hello FritzCT,

You say she uses Chrome? The last version to support Vista (Chrome 49) was released way back in April 2016 and only supports TLS 1.0 (unless you would like to try something rather advanced that involves installing an update for Windows Server 2008 SP2 and editing the registry). Firefox 52.9.0 is the usual recommendation for Vista; but its also been unsupported for more than two years now, and its probably slower than Chrome.

On the other hand, this has me thinking that she might be able to adapt to a Chromebook relatively easily, and they are less expensive than Windows 10 laptops. Personally, I wouldnt try to turn my elderly mother into a Linux user just to get more use out of hardware that must be a dozen years old.

.... No, my 32-bit Vista SP2 test machine still runs well and I have no problems accessing the webmail sites for Windows Outlook.com or my ISP (Shaw.ca) with my Firefox ESR v52.9.0 browser with this machine...

Hi FritzCT:

 

If you'd like to try Firefox ESR v52.9.0 (the final legacy version for Win XP and Vista released 26-Jun-2018), full offline installers (all regions and languages) are available for download from Mozilla's FTP server at https://archive.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/52.9.0esr/win32/. If you want the English-US installer (Firefox Setup 52.9.0esr.exe), for example, choose the /EN-US subfolder.

I believe Firefox ESR v52.9.0  supports TLS 1.1 and 1.2 connections to secure https sites by default, but I added the latest TLS 1.3 support to my Firefox ESR v52.9.0 (i.e., by changing security.tls.version.max to a value of 4 in the advanced settings). See Martin Brinkmann's June 2017 ghacks.net article How to Enable TLS 1.3 Support in Firefox and Chrome for detailed instructions.
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32-bit Vista Home Premium SP2 * Firefox ESR v52.9.0 * Malwarebytes Premium v3.5.1-1.0.365
HP Pavilion dv6835ca, Intel Core2Duo T5550 @ 1.83 GHz, 3 GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GS

Edited by lmacri, 23 September 2020 - 02:02 PM.

I added the latest TLS 1.3 support to my Firefox ESR v52.9.0...

Well, not exactly the latest. From the time of its release in March 2017, Firefox 52 ESR included optional support for Draft 18 of then-experimental TLS 1.3. The TLS 1.3 protocol was not finalized until RFC 8446 was published in August 2018, so Firefox 52.9.0 did not support it. However, New Moon 28 from developer roytam1 fully supports TLS 1.3. Not many websites require TLS 1.3 yet, but its already difficult to surf the net without TLS 1.2.

your FAQ link to another forum has an image of a specific error code that has never actually been seen on Vista

 
That's a good point. MS themselves confuses folks at help article 4569557 by appending images of unrelated error codes...

Hello VolumeZ,

You are more perceptive than most! I believe help article 4569557 was posted June 24, 2020, and in any case it was being widely discussed by the beginning of August - but notice that it was last updated Sep 1, 2020. What did Microsoft add to the article on Sep 1? If you look at the image for error code 80244019, notice Most recent check for updates: 8/3/2020. So if someone wanted an error code image in August 2020, they could not possibly get the correct one from that article. Of course if that someone had a working Vista system, they could simply run Windows Update and take a screenshot...

 

if someone wanted an error code image in August 2020, they could not possibly get the correct one from that article.

 

Regarding Windows 7 Service Pack 1, they can't possibly get one right now. None of the errors is related to the SHA-1 endpoint discontinuation in Windows 7 SP1, and better yet: Windows 7 SP1 is not at all affected. 

Speaking of Windows 7, FritzCT might consider installing that on the old laptop (but it would still need more RAM). Windows 7 is very similar to Vista and generally runs well on hardware from that period (which is often a problem for Windows 10). Granted, Windows 7 does not have a bright future either. The major advantage compared to Vista is that Windows 7 is still supported by browsers and other types of software, so the owner could use the current version of Chrome or almost any other program.

From OP's post #13

 

She uses the laptop for webmail only and it only has 1 Gb of RAM

 

I still think a light linux distro would be better than attempting to install Vista or Windows 7 on the computer. . 

Linux again? I believe Chrome only supports 64-bit Linux. The laptops Intel Celeron 575 is 64 bit, although the laptop shipped with 32-bit Vista and insufficient RAM. Maybe get her a Chromebook and give the old laptop to a young Linux enthusiast.

A light linux distro like Zorin would be easy to use for webmail only. Another 1GB and the Zorin Core would run well. If two of my family members could go from Windows 10 to Linux Mint Cinnamon and Linux Manjaro without a problem I'm sure the OP's mom will not have a problem using Zorin for Webmail. Zorin Lite gets by with 1GB of RAM. I have no idea how you could run Vista or Windows 7 on 1GB.

 

 

Edited by JohnC_21, 26 September 2020 - 08:13 AM.