While trying to bring back my pc from the depths of windows vista I tried to install google chrome from here and it simply doesn't work. any advice?
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Your issue is two-fold. First, the Windows Vista networking components, which the PortableApps.com Installer uses to download Chrome, won't work with any modern websites as they are way too outdated. After you have fully updated to every patch available in Windows Update, there is an unofficial patch you can apply that will allow the PA.c Installer and PA.c Platform to download from sites that don't support it: https://johnhaller.com/useful-stuff/enable-tls-1.1-and-1.2-on-windows-vista
Second, no mainstream browsers support Vista any longer, so you can't browse the web securely on that machine.
I'd highly suggest upgrading to Windows 7 which will be supported for a bit more than 11 months before being similarly end-of-lifed.
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