Getting updates and software for Old Windows versions

This is a list of updates and apps that I find useful on computers running old Windows versions.
Most of everything that makes up this list is taken from this document (which you can find on the r/windowsxp sidebar), I only took that and neatly arranged it into an HTML table.

Note: Recommended programs are marked with one asterisk*
Apps that require caution are marked with two asterisks**

Web Browsers

Note: in any Firefox-based browser use TenFourFox PEP to speed it up.

Internet Software

Security Software

Office and Productivity

Media - Video, Audio and Image Software

Utilities

User Interface Enhancements

Emulation / VM

Windows Components

Developer Tools

Microsoft Software

Updates

Notable Games and Novelties

List of latest games supported on XP (Reddit thread)

Internet Archive

• CD-ROM Images

• Classic PC Games

• Drivers

• Open Library

• Operating System CD's

• Retro DOS Games

• Vintage Software

• Windows XP Release

Drivers

• DriverPacks

• DriversCollection

• OEM Drivers

Note: If you are having issues regarding High Definition Audio devices, you most likely need Microsoft Universal Audio Architecture drivers plus correct chipset drivers installed before the devices will detect, then you'll need to install your actual sound drivers.

Extras

• Free services on the Internet

• The original files of some Windows wallpapers

• Windows XP Fun Packs

• Windows XP HD Wallpaper Pack

• Windows Vista and 7 HD Wallpaper Pack

• Windows HD User Account Picture Pack

• Windows XP Games thread on Reddit

Web Sites

• 68k.news - News from the Future

• FrogFind - Vintage Search Engine

• Acko.net - Hackery, Math & Design

• AllHotkeys.com - Your source of hotkeys and shortcuts

• Apple Macintosh PowerBook - December 2022 Archive

• Cameron's World - A collage of GeoCities sites

• Camas Reddit Search (archived version) - Search reddit, including deleted posts

• Cover Your Tracks - Test your browser's tracking protection

• Dispostable - Disposable Email!

• DOSGames.com - DOS Games

• EclecBoard - Legacy Windows Forum

• HaveIbeenPwned - Check if your email or phone is in a data breach

• Higher Intellect - PreterHuman.net

• i430vx.net - Index of i430VX's Windows support files

• Kelly's Corner - Windows XP Resources (Archived 2014)

• Library Genesis - Free articles, books, images, comics, audiobooks, and magazines.

• MDGx.com - Windows XP Tweaks and Fixes

• Microjs - Fantastic Micro Frameworks and Libraries

• MSFN.org - Where People Go to Know

• OoCities - GeoCities archived sites

• RedditSearch.io - Search Reddit

• Repair FAQ - repair guides for miscellaneous electronics

• Repair Preservation Group - Repair Information Repository

• Retro Browsers for Windows XP

• Retro Operating Systems Revival on Blogspot

• TFD.com - The Free Dictionary

• The Elder Geek - Registry Edits (Archived 2018)

• The Jargon File - Dictionary of hacker slang (Glossary)

• TheOldNet - use the Wayback Machine in old browsers

• TuneIn Radio - Free Internet Radio

• urlscan.io - A sandbox for the Web

• VirusTotal - Online Virus Scanner

• Windows93 - Funny parody of early Windows and the Internet

• World Radio Map - The radio map of the world

• XPForums.com - Windows XP Forums

• YouTube Edutainment List

• Z-Lib.org - The world's largest ebook library

Web Downloads

• 3PlaneSoft - 3D Screensavers for Windows

• BlueMaxima's Flashpoint - Flash games archive

• DOS Games Archive - Free classic games

• HeiDoc.net - MSDN File Hashes

• ISOriver - Download Software for Free

• Karios Repository - Drivers & Old Windows Updates

• MSDN.hackerc.at - Mirror for the-eye's MSDN Archive

• MyAbandonware - Download Abandonware Games

• NCHSoftware.com - Free software from NCH

• NirSoft.net - Free utilities by Nir Sofer

• OldApps.com - Archived repository

• OldVersion.com - Newer is not always better!

• PixelDrain.com - Free file sharing service

• Send.cm - Free file sharing service

• VetusWare.com - Abandonware Downloads

• Vimm.net - Emulators and ROMs

• WinSite.com - Windows XP Software List

• WinWorldPC.com - from the past, to the present, for the future

• Zeus Software - Home of nGlide and other software

• Zophar.net - Console Emulators for Windows




• MicroXP 0.82 - Tiny version of Windows XP for devices with limited system resources.

• MicroXP 0.82 "Black Flag" Update Pack - MicroXP Update Pack that restores critical missing files, fixes various issues, and adds various features.

• List of MicroXP and TinyXP Versions - Archived copies of numerous MicroXP and TinyXP releases.

• Calmira Online - Windows 3.11 on steroids

• DOS, Windows 3.1, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows XP, Windows 7, Windows 10 - 577GB FTP Archive - FTP server with a huge 20 years old archive of Windows freeware

Tweaks

User agent overrides for New Moon and Serpent to install addons from Pale Moon and Basilisk addon stores:
Go to about:config and create the following for New Moon:

general.useragent.override.addons.palemoon.org
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:4.1) Goanna/20170101 PaleMoon/29.3.1

And for Serpent:

general.useragent.override.addons.basilisk-browser.org
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; Win64; x64; rv:68.0) Gecko/20100101 Goanna/4.8 Firefox/68.0 Basilisk/20210719

uBlock for New Moon and additional filter lists from Adguard:
To install uBlock Origin on New Moon you can go to uBlock Origin for Firefox Legacy's GitHub page and download the latest release.
To integrate the Adguard filter lists (also works on Mypal68), go to options, then the "Filter lists" tab, scroll down, click "import" and paste this:

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/AdguardTeam/FiltersRegistry/master/filters/filter_2_Base/filter.txt
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/AdguardTeam/FiltersRegistry/master/filters/filter_3_Spyware/filter.txt
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/AdguardTeam/FiltersRegistry/master/filters/filter_17_TrackParam/filter.txt
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/AdguardTeam/FiltersRegistry/master/filters/filter_4_Social/filter.txt
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/AdguardTeam/FiltersRegistry/master/filters/filter_14_Annoyances/filter.txt
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/AdguardTeam/FiltersRegistry/master/filters/filter_10_Useful/filter.txt
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/AdguardTeam/FiltersRegistry/master/filters/filter_1_Russian/filter.txt
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/AdguardTeam/FiltersRegistry/master/filters/filter_6_German/filter.txt
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/AdguardTeam/FiltersRegistry/master/filters/filter_16_French/filter.txt
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/AdguardTeam/FiltersRegistry/master/filters/filter_7_Japanese/filter.txt
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/AdguardTeam/FiltersRegistry/master/filters/filter_8_Dutch/filter.txt
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/AdguardTeam/FiltersRegistry/master/filters/filter_9_Spanish/filter.txt
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/AdguardTeam/FiltersRegistry/master/filters/filter_13_Turkish/filter.txt
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/AdguardTeam/FiltersRegistry/master/filters/filter_224_Chinese/filter.txt

Afterwards, click "Update" and wait till it finishes, then click "Save changes".

Fix for touchpad scrolling in Waterfox
Lately I have been using Waterfox G3.2.6 on my laptop running Windows 8.1 due to how lightweight Firefox 78 is. It runs very well for the most part but I was instantly thrown off by the lack of touchpad scrolling in the browser. Luckily after some short searching I came across the solution.
Simply go to about:config, find the preference "ui.window_class_override", replace it with "MozillaWindowClass" and restart Waterfox, after which your scrolling should work fine!
This appears to be a bug with the Synaptics touchpad driver which uses a specific method to enable scrolling in Firefox, and having the class name change makes it break.
Reddit thread

Downloading extensions from the Chrome Web Store on Chromium 49 and making them work:
Find the extension or theme you want to download, and copy the extension ID from it. This does not include anything after the extension ID, if you're not sure if something is part of the ID or not, remove it and see if the page still loads.

Example:

Next, copy this URL:

https://clients2.google.com/service/update2/crx?response=redirect&prodversion=[PRODVERSION]&acceptformat=crx2,crx3&x=id%3D[EXTENSIONID]%26uc

With this URL we can download the extension straight from Google's servers. You will need to use a browser other than Chrome as to not automatically install it.
Next, replace [PRODUCTVERSION] with the exact version of Chrome that you're running, which in your case is 49.0.2623.112 for Chrome, and 49.0.2623.23 for Chromium Portable which you should use anyway.
Afterwards, replace [EXTENSIONID] with the end of the Extension ID you just copied.
If you hit Enter it should download a .CRX extension file. Unzip it, and if it has a _metadata folder, remove the underscore ( _ ) from it.

Then, go to Settings > Extensions, enable Developer Mode, click "load an unpacked extension" and lead it to the folder you just unpacked.
This is where normal Chrome starts to swear at locally installed extensions, while Chromium doesn't, hence why I put Chromium in the software list.
With this done, I will now leave a link to a bunch of unpacked Chrome extensions and themes for you to try out, one of them being a version of uBlock Origin that still works on Chrome 49.

Using the Discord plugin for Pidgin as a lightweight alternative to the web client:
There is a plugin for Pidgin which lets it use Discord, which is a better alternative to the bloated web client, that's often too slow for XP machines.

Warning: using anything other than the official Discord client is against the TOS. They won't outright ban you for it in most cases, but still, be warned.

To get started you should have Pidgin 2.14.1 installed from the software list above.
Next, go to the plugin's GitHub page and download the 2 linked DLL files under the "Windows" section. Put "libjson-glib" in Pidgin's installation folder, and "libdiscord" in the "plugins" folder.
Next, go to Accounts, set up your Discord account, go to Avanced, and uncheck "Fetch unread messages when account connects", otherwise it will open up every channel you have on Discord and will get you temporarily IP banned due to lots of network requests. Once you're certain that the option is unchecked, click OK and you will have your servers pop up in your buddy list.

Playing YouTube videos in VLC
VLC has built-in compatibility for playing network streams, which also works with YouTube, however usually it takes some work to get it running as the YouTube support that it comes with is often outdated.
To get it working, you have to head to VLC's GitHub repository and find the file called youtube.lua. Once there, click on "Raw" and save the obtained page as "youtube.luac" and put it in "VideoLAN\VLC\lua\playlist" (on Linux you can find the location for VLC by typing "whereis vlc" in the command line.)

After that, open VLC (or restart it if it was running), go to "Media > Open network stream" and paste your YouTube link (remember to set the desired video output and quality in the settings to hopefully improve performance). Alternatively you can use invidio.us to bring up a list of invidious instances, search for a video there and replace everything before "watch?v" with "https://www.youtube.com/".
You can also use SMTube with VLC by going to its configuration and adding it as a supported player. Then you can right click a video and set it to play in VLC.
Proof

Working Windows Live Messenger via the unofficial Escargot Servers
Reddit user u/RevolutionaryArm7530 found a way to get Escargot-patched Windows Live Messenger 2009 working on XP, beforehand only MSN Messenger worked.

Click-N-Type Additional Keyboards
Simply drop these files in the Click-N-Type program folder to use.
They should be available under File > Select a User Keyboard...

Full Qwerty Keyboard.cfg
Mini Alpha Keyboard.cfg
Mini Qwerty Keyboard.cfg

Courtesy of u/over_clox

Joystick2Mouse 3 Basic Mouse Config Files
This update configures the program with basic two button mouse support that is suitable for analog game controllers and gamepads with analog sticks.

Simply drop these files in the Joystick 2 Mouse 3 program folder to use.
Close the program before this update, it replaces Joystick 2 Mouse.exe.config

Basic Mouse.xml
General Actions.xml
Joystick 2 Mouse.exe.config

Courtesy of u/over_clox