Firefox ESR on systems that have not been online for a while

Micronaut · 2025-06-30 00:05:54

A strange problem has occurred on two Windows 7 systems/disks that I have maintained for a while, just because. I don't boot them often. Maybe once a year or so. This time Windows 7 OS itself seems to be cut off. The "Microsoft Security Essentials"/"Defender" anti-virus cannot update anymore. I guess MS has finally cut the hold-outs loose. But something much stranger occurred with the browsers.

On one of these systems Firefox still works. I can start it up and go onto the current web. Everything seems normal. On the other, Firefox thinks all websites have "security problems" and refuses to connect. The a certificate match problem, right? What would there be in a Firefox install that requires updating beyond what the standard update would perform? I ran the latest available update (115.24) on both. And both seemed to update successfully.

Or is this a problem fixable in the browser at all? Would there be some other update, something on the OS side, that I missed for one of those old disks?

rolfie · 2025-06-30 06:44:57

For the MSE a registry patch is available to fix the update issue. Had it myself in a Win7 VM.

I am not using the FF on Win7. An idea since the two machines seem not to work the same: has one of them a proxy or something like that defined in the internet connections?

Micronaut · 2025-06-30 20:27:43

Yes, I discovered the "Easy Fix" MSI. An amusing name. All it does is add TLS 1.2 support. Applying that solved many problems. It stopped whingeing that it was not a legitimate copy and was able to check for updates even beyond the antivirus. Many things turned up that I was not even aware of. Some of them dated 2021, after the end of public support. Maybe they released some of the 'extended support' stuff for free after the final end of all support? It's taking a while to download and install them. But it seems worthwhile to get them.

Edited to add: And yes, Firefox now works properly also.

Last edited by Micronaut (2025-06-30 20:31:37)