topic Re: Internet largely not working in Windows XP VM in VMware Fusion Discussions

Internet largely not working in Windows XP VM

iPodShuffle — Tue, 17 May 2022 01:28:43 GMT

I have a VM with Windows XP Professional SP3 that I want to use for nostalgia purposes and I am quite new when it comes to virtual machines. I think the internet somewhat works in the sense that google.com comes up, but almost nothing else does. It's a factory fresh install so I don't know if doing any troubleshooting steps regarding restoring settings will change anything. Does this have to do with things like certificates? I enabled TLS 1.0 in the Internet Explorer settings and would be happy to download a newer XP-compatible web browser on my host computer and copy it into the VM if that solves things, but I'm a bit unsure how to move forward since a lot of troubleshooting articles I come across are for advanced users with very specific scenarios and my issue seems more general. Happy to provide any clarifying information. Thank you!

Re: Internet largely not working in Windows XP VM

scott28tt — Tue, 17 May 2022 04:38:33 GMT

As the VM has connectivity, I expect this to be websites rejecting requests from Internet Explorer - the same would happen if you had XP on a physical system.

You need to find a way of installing a different browser on your XP installation.

Re: Internet largely not working in Windows XP VM

lukaszzasko — Tue, 17 May 2022 08:47:29 GMT

You have to start from Windows Update to refresh all security patches and root global wildcart certificates. Most of webpages will not load due to incompatibility with IE6.

Re: Internet largely not working in Windows XP VM

wila — Tue, 17 May 2022 10:56:58 GMT

Hi,

Not sure if there are browsers that will work on Windows XP.

The problem is not VMware, the problem is TLS.

Without a modern TLS/SSL stack you can't browse the internet.

There's not a lot of websites that allow you to access them with either TLS 1.0 or TLS 1.1.
You need at TLS 1.2 in order to browse nowadays and most website require https as well.

The lowest Windows version that supports TLS 1.2 is MS Windows 7 and only after you have installed all security patches.

--
Wil

Re: Internet largely not working in Windows XP VM

ColoradoMarmot — Tue, 17 May 2022 15:52:16 GMT

I would also just note that XP isn't remotely safe to use on the Internet these days. Time from exposure to compromise is often measured in minutes.

Re: Internet largely not working in Windows XP VM

anilspp — Thu, 19 May 2022 14:24:53 GMT

You will get challenges if you are using outdated Windows xp in recent times to use internet.