hello everybody and welcome back to
another episode of time travel now today
we're going to be taking a look at a
program
uh or a program suite rather called
windows live one care yes the video
you're watching right now is over four
years in the making so i gotta give you
a little backstory in october of 2017 i
attempted to take a look at my latest
thrift store find a copy of windows live
one care a 49.95 a year companion
product for windows that had a focus on
security and performance providing
antivirus protection system maintenance
tools and even file backup yes this was
a subscription service because you can
never have enough of those right and it
was essentially microsoft's way of
competing with the likes of norton and
mcafee which isn't really that difficult
while also adding a couple of other
things it came about after microsoft
purchased antivirus technology from a
romanian company called gcad software
which one care would be built on top of
and it eventually entered its beta
development stages in august of 2005.
being in beta microsoft offered it for
free to testers and even gave them the
option to purchase one year of the final
version of the service for 60 off 1995
instead of 49.95 and in the summer of
2006 it began selling for that full
price that's right this actually
pre-dates windows vista and the copy
that i have here comes in the newer
packaging that was changed after vista
was released so that's great and all but
why was this video never published until
now is this the compact portable part 2
before the compact portable part 2 well
it actually was published just over on
my extras channel you see when i put the
disk into my computer and ran the setup
wizard in a windows vista vm it
immediately came back and said that the
installer could not connect to the
activation servers which have been down
for years so it's a dead end right well
not exactly because after i published
that video i was contacted by somebody
who thought they could reverse engineer
the setup wizard to bypass that phase of
the installation process long story
short they did and one care rewritten is
the result and that's what we're going
to be talking about today but first i
want to plug the person who made this
whole thing he goes by cobbs over on
twitter and cobb's server closet here on
youtube and this is the tweet that he
sent out when he
initially was able to reverse engineer
the installer and get one care installed
which is really really awesome
this project has been out for a while um
over a year in fact i've been needing to
get to this for a while but uh better
late than never right so there are a
couple of caveats to this number one and
this is the biggest thing you need to
have a copy of one care he's not
providing the software itself and it's
understandable because he just wants to
avoid any sort of copyright issues with
microsoft in fact he's even gone as far
as to de-branded the installer the other
big caveat is not everything is
functional and this is to be expected
because just of the nature of what one
care was it relied on a lot of microsoft
services to be up and running that are
now non-existent for all this stuff to
work so like online backup for instance
doesn't work anymore because whatever
microsoft used
for one care tobacco files to doesn't
exist anymore though he does mention
that a patch in the future may be
created to redirect uh the backup to one
drive which would be pretty cool
actually and that's pretty much the same
deal for these three other components
here one care circles is planned printer
sharing which isn't really a big deal
anyways because you can do that in
windows by default
it is planned and windows xp support
sounds like it's going to be the most
involving because it requires deep
modifications to the installer that he's
already made uh but you know this is
just a side project just want to throw
that out there this is not his full-time
gig or anything he said that this is
just something he did on the side so
just please don't go like bugging him
saying when's xp support coming so let's
go ahead and switch to our windows vista
virtual machine here and get this thing
installed but first we have to install a
couple of prerequisites number one is
dot net 4.0 so i've already got that
installed here number two is you need to
have the windows live log on or the
windows live id sign in assistant
installed as well so he actually
provides this if we go back to the
website here if you go down here and go
to attack shooters up here at the top
you go to download now he's got the one
care rere installer which is both 32 and
64 bit compatible and then you've got
the 32-bit version of the windows live
id service and the 64-bit version of it
so we're in a 64-bit windows vista vm so
that's the version i've got here so
we'll accept that install and there we
go so we'll finish that and now we can
run the one care rewritten setup wizard
so there's a few things to read over
here there's some frequently asked
questions and when you're ready you go
up here to the install tab and it says
to make sure you have the one care disk
in your optical drive and we'll click on
install now and it will ask us to select
our language the only language is
english uk at the moment which is just
fine for us we're going to accept uh his
terms and conditions which is basically
these notes here it tells you you know
do this at your own risk this is not
endorsed by microsoft all that stuff and
then here you have the actual microsoft
license agreement so we'll accept that
and now it goes through its automated
setup process there's a lot of stuff
that it does here there's a system log
window that opens up in the back here so
if it spit out any errors you could uh
see why it failed but it's pretty much
in my testing
it installed just fine uh for me
hopefully it will for you and yeah
that's pretty much all there is to it so
we'll just let it do its thing here and
when it opens up this command prompt
window here you're almost done because
this is one of the last things that it
has to do you can see it's turned off
windows defender because it's making one
care the default antivirus software
which is something that i do not
recommend and something that cobb does
not recommend either because
as you're going to see in a moment you
can't get any updated virus definition
so you're running on signatures from
like 2006
which you definitely
do not want to be doing so you're going
to want to swap your default antivirus
program back to something that's
actually modern and there we go so we've
finished up we can see it's uh installed
here and it's just opened up one care
though the installer does say to not use
one care until your computer has
restarted so it just it just opened it
for us though we're going to restart now
and we'll click on finish now one of the
first things one care will do is ask you
to select a network location for your
internet connection we'll just make this
a home network
and it'll do this a couple times there
and if we go down here you can see we've
got windows live one care running now it
immediately says that our status is at
risk and that's because again it cannot
update our antivirus definitions so
they're super out of date and that's why
this is not meant to be used at all as a
serious security product that's not what
this patch is intended to do it's mainly
just for the nostalgia factor kind of
just to take a look back at this program
see what it was all about and get some
functionality even if it's very minimal
functionality out of software that you
own but can't use anymore because
microsoft shut down the activation
server so that's what this project is
designed to do but even though it can't
update virus definitions you can still
scan for viruses so we're gonna do a
quick scan here we're not going to
actually let it do the scan but you know
it'll scan your computer for viruses and
if i had any viruses on here that were
around in
2006 let's say it would probably be able
to detect them
here's our really detailed scan report
there the other thing that's functional
is the firewall so there you go now the
performance plus category is where the
tune-up functionality lives and this is
something that will work at least
partially we can start it here it'll
give you a list of what it's going to do
so it's going to remove unnecessary
files doesn't really exactly say what
those are and it's defragging the drive
now so
that still works but you can just do
that in windows by default this is just
kind of making it a little more
automated in this like one stop shop
kind of thing and of course backup and
restore ain't gonna work you can click
this all you want i'm not gonna do
anything we can go up here to about and
view the version number and the virus
inspirer definition version there you go
copyright 2007
so yeah there it is uh you've got these
links up here let's see if these work
windows live one care help no questions
or answers about one care were found in
your local help resources okay getting
started with windows live one care so
that's what this uh urgent this first
urgent pop-up here refers to it's trying
to connect to the one care servers to
complete installation but obviously it's
not going to be able to do that so
that's also what this is asking you to
do
uh and then you've got to the privacy
statement which you also have to install
finish installing one go to do and send
feedback same thing so really the only
other thing you can do from this screen
is click on change settings over here
which brings up an xp control panel
style interface here where you can
disable the firewall you can configure
the firewall you can add you know
exceptions i'm sure you can go to tune
up here you can choose to you know how
often you want this to run
so there is a nice automated feature
with that as well configure your backup
settings your virus inspire if you want
to turn that off which we're going to do
because it's pointless to to have it on
up here you got printer sharing
and you have logging right here which uh
we can create a support log if we want
to let's see if this works not
responding oh okay oh there we go check
that out
so this is actually a real support log
so it gives you information about your
system here machine name all that stuff
yeah that's pretty neat i wonder when
the last time somebody generated one of
these was well i guess cobbs might have
done it because uh you know he made the
thing he might have done it in his
testing right
but yeah i mean that's pretty much
all there is to it guys that is windows
live one care rewritten like i said
certainly a really neat project just not
meant to be used seriously as a security
solution but i think it's always awesome
when software gets brought back from the
dead like this and hopefully you guys
think so too so huge thank you to cobbs
for putting in all the hard work that
i'm sure was necessary to get this all
up and running and huge thanks to you
guys for watching as always i will see
you in the next video
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you