To begin with, I had the latest untouched vista sp2 / XP sp3, both clean installed on vmware workstation 16. The process of installing the two went all smooth, until the moment I need to start using things like web browsers and anything connectivity-related. The latest IE for vista IE9 / XP IE8 does not display contents correctly, and neither the last supported chrome 49 does. Google chrome even completely blocks you from using, stating the clock is ahead while in reality the time is in synced. Then I figured it might be that windows needed additional patches to sort things out, as I had past experiences on windows 7 sp1 when it was freshly installed without updates, applications can go broken. To my surprise, windows update on vista refused to perform any update check and all it returns was an error code 80072efe. Windows XP made it even worse by having you connect to the outdated IE to get windows update which goes into this endless loop of errors. On windows 7, Microsoft was kind enough to provide a cumulative patch which is the so-called "convenience rollup update" beyond its release of last service pack. I do not need all the latest security patches till its EOL, as my only intention was to get the basic apps like browsers working or at the very least make windows update works. Does Microsoft release any rollup package integrating fixes for XP / Vista after their last release service pack?
for all OS < win.8 you need a new root certifikate update all root certifikate's publishd with the original setup CD's / DVD's are finished ther live time (obsolete) similar no online / net traffic fails without root certifikate update in the early days MS published a EXE wich update the root certificates, but they stop this support -> you need a offline update
WU doesn't work on XP since few mounts ago even if you update XP with the latest TSL patch from Posready 2019 You can use some unofficial methods to get XP updated, but IE will be practically useless no matter of that. BTW there are a number of browsers which are still ported on XP, my suggestion is to use mypal (a XP/Vista port of Palemoon, which,in turn, is a modern and supported port of the pre australis Firefox)
Thanks for the suggestion! It looks like I'll have to resort to some 3rd-party offline tools. I did try out a few listed on MDL (WHD, WUMT, WUMGR) but they either don't support XP / Vista or there were error code running offline option. Are there any recommendation on getting a proper tool that supports XP / Vista? Is there any tool that bypass restriction and extract updates directly through microsoft's server?
Not that I'm a real expert of the matter given I have my own already updated VHDs, but there are dedicated threads here in this room, on msfn and wincert forums.