How to manually update my XP?

[makeascene2010]

New to this forum so bear with me, I'm just desperate for help! I bought a laptop off of craigslist today because I was in desperate need of one seeing as my desktop has died. Only thing is I had no idea XP was no longer supported with many things. Is there a way to update it? It's in pretty good shape, just old. I tried to update the biois on the dell website but apparently the battery doesn't hold a charge well and it keeps telling me to charge it (It's on the charger but still not working.)
The specs aren't so great from what I understand, Not fun going from my alienware to this, but I'm broke and can't afford anything else. Is there any hope for this to become a better machine?

Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition
Version 2002 Service pack 3
Intel(R) Celeron(R)M
Processor 1.40GHz
0.99GB of RAM

Thanks in advance!

[camerongray]

If you just run Windows update as normal you will get all the updates that are available for XP.  Not being in support just means that Microsoft will not be making any more updates, existing ones will still download.

As far as making it better, I can't really think of anything unfortunately.  It's certainly not worth the cost of a more modern OS and that CPU will be a major limitation despite any upgrades you try.

Of course, you can always create a thread on this forum about why your desktop "died" - We may be able to help you get that up and running again.

[makeascene2010]

It doesn't let me run the updates anymore either, and brings me to a page that says XP is no longer supported. I'll post a thing about my desktop, though I'm pretty sure the hardrive is fried or something of the sort.

[makeascene2010]

This is what it does when I even try to open the updater. I assumed it was just because it was no longer supported but maybe it's the Laptop in general.

[attachment deleted by admin to conserve space]

[Salmon Trout]

I don't know if I should mention this here, but I had a laptop running XP lying around as a spare system. I installed OpenSuSe after XP death day in April but various members of my household felt scared by Linux so I made it dual boot OpenSuse/XP SP3 and just out of curiosity I tried the widely known Point Of Sale registry trick. You can fool Windows XP into thinking it's the Embedded Industry version, which is designed for point-of-sale (POS) systems and will (apparently) continue to receive support until April 2019. This is what I did:

1. Open a blank text file in a text editor e.g. Notepad

2. Paste in the text below

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\WPA\PosReady]
"Installed"=dword:00000001

3. Save the file somewhere with a .reg extension - for example xp.reg

4. Find the file in Windows Explorer

5. Double click it.

6. Answer Yes to the prompt.

I restarted the machine and saw that the Windows Update notification was showing 74 updates available (this was Aug 15 2014 approx; not updated since XP end of life date). The only ones that failed were definitions for Microsoft Security Essentials so I installed Avira Free. I have been notified of more updates since.

Disclaimers:

a. Modify the registry at your own risk.
b. Nobody knows if Microsoft will disable this loophole, although doing so would probably disable the many point of sale systems using XP It seems to me if you are going to make XP stagger along a bit longer you may as well get whatever updates are going.
c. Maybe some POS updates would interfere with a regular XP PC although mine seems fine so far.
d. Microsoft are aware of the trick, and say that security patches obtained by this method may not have been tested against regular PC style XP, and that users should really update to a supported OS.
e. Only suitable for 32 bit systems, although apparently there is a workaround for 64 bit systems here (I have not tried this)

http://www.sebijk.com/community/board9-community/board5-pc/2985-getting-xp-updates/?s=50e2f202ba293eb33974b075c6ce5b4b21ee1963

f. If someone was thinking of doing this they should probably do some Googling and evaluate this option for themselves.