‘Windows Update Restored’ Site Provides Updates for Classic Windows Versions
A community-based project recently went live, providing access to the long-lost Windows Update page. This page works with classic versions of Windows to allow OS updates.of Windows Update Restored The site can update some classic versions of Windows, so team members are busy preparing an update location. The team eventually hopes to serve users installing and updating systems using Windows 95, NT 4.0, 98, Me, 2000 and XP. In addition to Windows Server 2003, the site’s compatibility page also has entries for “Vista and later” for Windows, indicating that these may eventually be part of the roadmap.
Currently working and available update sites are limited to clones of the Windows Update v3.1 website (1997) for Windows 95, NT 4.0 and Windows 98 (and SE). The people behind this project also warn site visitors that it is not an official Microsoft-backed project and the update page it links to. Use these pages at your own risk, they warn, and also emphasize that the update page is “for archival purposes only.” However, in the video below you can see this site working for OS updates.
The video demo walkthrough above demonstrates a scenario that users of older Windows versions may encounter. At the beginning of the video, updating Windows 95 looks very quick and easy.After launching the default Internet Explorer (which works with v5 and v5.5), the user can see[製品の更新]Press the button. A “Security Warning” will pop up and you will have to accept the authenticity of the Windows Update control package. After that, the “please wait” prompt will be replaced with a page full of checkboxes, allowing you to select updates that have been detected as useful for your Windows system.
Take a look at this example of the first Windows 95 update and be amazed at how small the download size is compared to what we are used to today. The critical update package provided for this OS was only 3.1 MB, the security update was only 124 KB, and the largest download observed was DirectX 8a (recommended, optional) at 11.2 MB. You may need to visit the update page multiple times and restart your PC to complete the update process.
Elsewhere in the video you can see similar demonstrations using other older OSes. Specifically, the video host also uses the Windows Update Restored v3.1 site to update Windows NT4 to Windows 98 SE with Service Pack 6a and many critical and optional packages. All of these OS critical updates are now available, but some optional updates are not linked at the time of writing. For example, DX8.1 is currently not downloaded and installed on Windows 95 even if you check the box on the update page.
In the table above you can see the web address that Internet Explorer needs to be pointed to on each OS in order to access the cloned Windows Update page. For clarity, I’ll reiterate that Windows 95, NT 4.0, and Windows 98 (and SE) can be updated at: v3.windowsupdaterestored.com address.
A Windows Update page that does similar update magic for Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, and supports Windows Vista and later is still in the works. There is no specified timescale for these pages to appear, so we’ll have to wait and see or check the status of the project. MSFN forum post. Windows Me and Windows 2000 are also not yet in the update service, but the video mentions the “near future” goal of starting support for these OSes.
Windows Update Restored is a welcome and interesting project, but it’s not officially recommended by the team to keep using older versions of Windows. We agree and want to steer PC users to modern, more secure OSes like Windows 10 and 11 (and the latest versions of Linux) for browsing, connected tasks, gaming, and productivity. I’m here.
