Recall that even though Microsoft has stopped issuing updates for Windows XP to the general public, they are actually still developing updates – for paying customers.
The trick for obtaining updates for Windows XP involves changing a setting in Windows that makes Windows Update think that it’s actually running a variant of Windows XP that’s still supported, namely ‘POSReady 2009’.
There are all kinds of problems with this, starting with the likelihood that Microsoft will find a way to stop it. In short, if you’re desperate to keep running Windows XP and you want to install the available updates, and you’re willing to take the risk of totally messing up your system, it might be worth a try. But I seriously cannot recommend it.
Update 2014Jun04: For those of you who can’t resist the temptation to try this, the procedure is outlined in this betanews.com blog post.
On Wednesday, Microsoft announcedmyBulletins: a new web-based service that allows users to keep track of updates.
The service provides a centralized view of all Microsoft bulletins that can be customized to show only products in which you are interested. The resulting list can be further searched, filtered, and sorted. Once you customize myBulletins, it’s a handy way to see all Microsoft bulletins in one place without a lot of clutter.
The latest version of the Webkit-based Opera browser contains several fixes for stability issues. There are apparently no security-related fixes in this version.
Yesterday, Google announced the latest new version of its web browser. Chrome 34.0.1847.137 includes fixes for three security vulnerabilities, as well as the latest version of the embedded Flash viewer.
Adobe has settled into a routine of publishing updates for its software on the second Tuesday on each month, in line with Microsoft’s practices. Today Adobe announced updates for Flash and Reader/Acrobat.
Both the Flash bulletin and the Reader/Acrobat bulletin are a bit light on details, saying only that the updates address critical vulnerabilities in the software.
The release notes for the new version (13.0.0.214) of Flash go into more details, although most of the information is about new features.
As usual, Google Chrome and Internet Explorer on Windows 8.x will be updated automatically and via Windows Update, respectively.
On May 9, a new version of Firefox was released by Mozilla. Since version 29.0.1 is considered a minor (‘dot’) release, there was no formal announcement.
The release notes provide some clues as to the changes in 29.0.1. A few minor bugs were fixed, but none of them appear to be security-related. The colour of unselected tabs was changed to make them more visible than they are in Firefox 29.
Next Tuesday we’ll find out whether Microsoft is going to stick to its original plan and stop providing Windows XP security updates to us ordinary folks.
According to the Advance Notification post on the MSRC blog, this month’s updates will include eight bulletins, with two of those being Critical. The updates affect the usual suspects, including Windows, Office, Internet Explorer and .NET.
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