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Microsoft Download Center Archive
PowerToys (https://legacyupdate.net/download-center/powertoys) used to be on my "first software to install" list on a new machine. Between Tweak UI and Deskman, you could _almost_ get a minimal X Windows-like UI. Get those set up and add on LiteStep (http://litestep.net/) and you were pretty much good to go, with the exceptions of the kernel, network stack, and CLI toolset, of course.
The memories! Back in the day I couldn't install XP anywhere without bringing at lease TweakUI and CmdHere, and probalby some others I've forgotten.
PowerToys still is on my "first software to install" list even in windows 11 as it adds so much useful features such as peek.
For me the very first to install on any new Windows system is

    winget instal git.git -i
and tick the option to add all the GNU coreutils to make Windows usable.

I can then git clone my repository of setup scripts to configure the rest of the system unattended.

D&D a playbook from Atlas/Revi and your good to go.
Wow, somehow I entirely missed that Windows XP versions were made. I relied pretty heavily on the Windows 95 PowerToys when I used Win95.

Deskman seems like it'd be awesome.

They still make it. Tons of great utils for Win10/11 (I'm off of 11 cuz fuck that noise, but when I was on win10 I used it).

Here's the link to the current version for modern systems: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/

http://litestep.net/ - worth to go and check this website. This is internet we used to have. Simple page, no crap, JS, etc., loads immediately and then stays in the cache.

Download link starts... download, instead of showing some "engagement" screens, asking for email, login with whatever account in the social media one has. If we wanted to discuss this software, well, there was a forum for this. No need to create account in Discord, Twitter, Facebook, and so on.

This is great! But, it feels like it's only a matter of time before it changes ownership and everything is re-bundled with malware. It sucks that I can't get old downloads but it would be nice if they came from official sources. I don't have a solution. But looking for old drivers etc, mostly leads to bad sources.
Legacy Update has been well-supported for over 3 years and takes donations via Github (11 current, 61 past sponsors) and Patreon (where you can sponsor up to $80 to fuel Adam's 3D printing addiction). I recommend it to our PortableApps.com users who are on older operating systems and use it in my virtual machines for testing our releases. I'm hopeful it'll stay as is for a while.
Hey its awesome but regarding donations since I actually wanted to talk about it.

But can you please look at adding yourself/Download Center archive to liberapay too as I was hoping to find liberapay.

You mention having kofi being the lowest prices but I think Liberapay has no fees other than payment processing and is itself an non profit and funded via donations.

Maybe then you would have "too many options to donate" but I think liberapay can be a good option to have honestly imo and I am interested to hear your thoughts about it.

Also I wanted to download windows 7 iso to run a simpler thing on my pc but Microsoft being shitty removed the download link of it and everything so great to see your project, Going to bookmark it right now and thank you!

OpenCollective is another good alternative, that use the same means to fund themselves as they're offering projects to use, compared to the GitHub/Microsoft way of doing things.
Oh yea, forgot about OpenCollective but its good too and I think can give legal way to get fiscal sponsorship/basically be treated as a non profit/get legal donation method as well which can be nice for this project and all benefits that get with it. He can check out OpenCollective too!
  • mook
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  • 15 hours ago
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Shouldn't the files be signed by Microsoft, with a timestamp signature? That should (barring somebody locating a relevant private key) still mark them as not having been modified.

Of course, how many people would know to check for the signature (especially in the case the site went malicious and therefore wouldn't tell you to do so) would be a different question…

  • zerr
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  • 4 hours ago
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We need something similar for Windows 7 games, Calculator and WordPad.
Genuine question, not being sarcastic: why would someone want/need these downloads?
Lots of workshops, factories, university research labs, etc. still use old machinery that would be a huge waste of money to replace just because the computer that controls it runs Windows 95. In some cases it can't be replaced because the company that created the software, drivers, or IO cards is long gone.
the hardware and software licences for some of these systems can run into the millions too
Installing Acid Pro 6 requires Visual Studio Redistributable packages the Microsoft no longer has available.

At least, last I checked.

They have the C++ ones are available: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/windows/latest-support...
Historical preservation, retro computing, period-correct hardware setups.
  • nelqn
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  • 6 hours ago
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The C++ redistributables are necessary for many programs and, for some reason, recent versions of Windows do not include them all.
There's a tool for blocking selected driver updates that still works on Windows 11. Very handy.
Out of curiosity, what's the name of this tool? Your comment made me wonder if it's possible to reimplement it as FOSS.
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  • 6 hours ago
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I have a legitimate need to replicate systems that are sometimes very legacy for security research (apps that sit on top, rather than the os itself). Building stuff like a base Windows XP image is easy enough, but sometimes system updates are required - even stuff like iirc tls1.2 isn’t supported in IE6
I’ll also add: games and nostalgia.
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  • 18 hours ago
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Imagine you have a 2m$ spectroscope or offset printing machine running windows xp.
And it's not worth risking Windows 11 destroying it by slamming the irreplaceable robotic stuff into itself in such ways that NASA or NTSB would find fancy UI animations or virtualization based security culpable. You may insist that programs that control airplanes and nuclear reactors are supposed to be written in Rust + TypeScript on daily updated Linux installation that depends on AWS us-east-1, but they would insist it ain't stupid if it works.
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  • 6 hours ago
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  • pabs3
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  • 5 hours ago
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Another archiving attempt for the Microsoft site:

https://wiki.archiveteam.org/index.php/Microsoft_Download_Ce...