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LegacyUpdate / LegacyUpdate

Get back online, activate, and install updates on your legacy Windows PC
http://legacyupdate.net
Apache License 2.0
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Windows Storage Server 2003 support #243

Open Lost-Entrepreneur439 opened 7 months ago

Lost-Entrepreneur439 commented 7 months ago

Windows Storage Server 2003 is an obscure version of SS2003, it was mainly seen on Dell PowerEdge systems, and eventually became lost, I found a copy of it today and uploaded it to the internet archive, but Legacy Update does not properly support this version. It detects the OS as Windows XP Professional x64 Edition SP2, and only shows Server 2003 updates up to 07-2015, Storage Server 2003 was supported until 10-2016 according to Microsoft https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/products/windows-storage-server-2003.

kirb commented 6 months ago

That's interesting because what you're seeing is what Microsoft themselves are returning from the official Windows Update servers. Legacy Update only proxies it to make sure you can access it again.

If you're on Legacy Update 1.9 or 1.8, the name you see is coming directly from the OS. Otherwise, it's a bunch of logic I wrote to make the best guess as to the brand name. The name displayed doesn't really matter, it's just cosmetic, but it's interesting that it's wrong. You can check yourself what the OS reports with wmic os get caption in cmd.

If you have the time to do so, it would be interesting to see if Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) on a recent Windows Server install finds any updates beyond 2015-07 for Storage Server 2003. If not, maybe Microsoft cut it off early, or those updates were only available for manual install for some reason? Also possible you need to install those updates for the remainder of them to appear.

Lost-Entrepreneur439 commented 6 months ago

That's interesting because what you're seeing is what Microsoft themselves are returning from the official Windows Update servers. Legacy Update only proxies it to make sure you can access it again.

If you're on Legacy Update 1.9 or 1.8, the name you see is coming directly from the OS. Otherwise, it's a bunch of logic I wrote to make the best guess as to the brand name. The name displayed doesn't really matter, it's just cosmetic, but it's interesting that it's wrong. You can check yourself what the OS reports with wmic os get caption in cmd.

If you have the time to do so, it would be interesting to see if Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) on a recent Windows Server install finds any updates beyond 2015-07 for Storage Server 2003. If not, maybe Microsoft cut it off early, or those updates were only available for manual install for some reason? Also possible you need to install those updates for the remainder of them to appear.

How would I set up WSUS to check?

kirb commented 1 month ago

I finally got around to testing this.

"Microsoft(R) Windows(R) Server 2003 Enterprise x64 Edition" is what the OS identifies itself as from WMI. You can also see it on the desktop if you enable the desktop watermark. @TheOneGoofAli also noticed it identifies as Enterprise x64 Edition to WSUS.

image

Storage Server branding comes from wssbrand.dll - this is interesting because it seems like an early attempt at the centralised branding system implemented in Vista, or at least a replica of the same concept. Aside from the OS name string, it also contains the boot logo, logon/winver banner, and classic Start menu banner. Of course, that said, anything that isn't designed to look for that dll will still think it's Enterprise x64.

I wasn't able to find any updates past 2015-07-14, nor could Ali find any on WSUS. So the answer could be either:

I'll implement having the product name logic detect Storage Server in 1.10.1, but I don't know if there's a good answer for what happened to Storage Server beyond June 2015. Have you seen any updates beyond that date lingering out there, by any chance? (Feel free to DM me on Discord if you have anything you want to share.)