2023-12 Update: Fixed the dead PSTools link. 
Preface
360 Extreme Explorer is a Chromium fork developed by controversial Chinese company QiHoo 360, with its most notable feature being that certain versions can run under Windows XP despite being based on Chromium versions newer than the last version officially supported (49) on Windows XP. This feature has made them popular browsers to use under Windows XP as they are based on much newer Chromium versions than Chrome/Chromium 49, which is from 2016 and is pretty much unusable on today’s Internet. Since 2021, modified versions of these browsers with the telemetry removed have surfaced, which do not make any connections to Chinese servers.
With some techniques, it is possible to run these browsers under Windows 2000 with the Extended Kernel installed, however it is not as straight forward as just installing the Extended Kernel and running the browser, as there is some extra steps you need to take in order to have a stable and functional browser.
Requisites
- Windows 2000 with Extended Kernel installed (2.9b minimum, preferably with settings similar to these)
- A CPU that supports SSE2
- 360 Extreme Explorer Modified Version 11.0.2251.0, 12.0.1592.0, or 13.0.2250.0
- “psexec.exe”
from this version of PsTools (Multi-core/processor and HT/
- Recent Root Updates installed. (In order to avoid running in to certificate errors)
Instructions
1. Download and extract the archive of one of the modified versions of 360EE from the page on Internet Archive that is linked in the Requisites section. There are three relevant versions that are worth considering; each version requires slightly different methods in order to get stable functionality in Windows 2000.
- 11.0.2251.0 (Chromium 69 based, Lowest resource usage and most stable, however is not recommended anymore due to age)
- 12.0.1592.0
(Chromium 78 based, Recommended version, as stable as 11.0 and loads more
sites, but has higher resource usage)
- 13.0.2250.0 (Chromium 86 based, Newest version, loads the most sites but is also not as stable as 11.0 or 12.0, most resource intensive)
Other versions not mentioned above are not recommended and will not be covered in this guide due to either age (9.5.0.138 is too old) or broken functionality (13.0.2310.0 has some features broken that work in 13.0.2250.0). Kafan Security’s Minibrowser and DC Browser will also not be covered due to major instability or broken features.
2. Once you have extracted the browser archive, you will need to make a shortcut pointing to the executable with certain command line switches added in the “Target” section. What switches you need to use vary by what version you downloaded.
- For 11.0.2251.0, use “--no-sandbox --no-proxy-server”
- For 12.0.1592.0, use "--no-proxy-server --enable-features=NetworkServiceInProcess --/prefetch:5 --disable-background-networking --no-sandbox”
- For 13.0.2250.0, use “--no-proxy-server --enable-features=NetworkServiceInProcess --disable-background-networking --no-sandbox”
If you are using a system with only a single core processor, or a virtual machine with only one core assigned to the guest, you can just copy and paste the switches (without the quotes) in the “Target” section of the shortcut after the path to the executable as shown below.
In the example shown above, the “Target” section contains this string (without the quotes):
“C:\Chrome-bin\360chrome.exe --no-proxy-server --enable-features=NetworkServiceInProcess --/prefetch:5 --disable-background-networking --no-sandbox”
If you are using a multi-core, multi-processor, or system
equipped with
All versions of 360EE on Windows 2000 have major stability issues on systems with more than 1 or 2 processors or processor cores and setting affinity is the only way to fix this issue. Psexec allows the setting of processor affinity on launch without having to use Task Manager to assign each process’s affinity manually.
Download the PsTools archive from the Requisites section and
copy PsExec to a directory where it is easily accessible (either in the browser
directory or in a
After you have done that, make a shortcut pointing to psexec.exe with the following arguments in the “Target” section of the shortcut (without the quotes):
“(path to psexec)\psexec.exe -u (your username) -p (your password) -a (CPUs to execute on) (360EE path)\360chrome.exe (command line switches required to launch respective 360EE version)”
- Your user account must have a password unless you want to press Enter on a CMD window asking for a password.
- For the “-a” switch, you specify the CPUs using the number you want to execute on, for example if you want the browser to execute on the first CPU/core, you would use “-a 0” as CPU0 is the first CPU/core of any multi CPU/core system.
- You can also specify multiple CPUs for the browser to execute on using “,” as a separator, for example if you are using an 8 core processor without HT and want the browser to execute on the last 2 cores, you would use “-a 6,7” as CPU6 and CPU7 are the last 2 cores.
In the example shown above, the “Target” section contains this string (without the quotes):
“C:\WINNT\system32\psexec.exe -u Administrator -p test -a 3 C:\Chrome-bin\360chrome.exe --no-proxy-server --enable-features=NetworkServiceInProcess --/prefetch:5 --disable-background-networking --no-sandbox”
Windows 2000 has a character limit of 260 characters for the “Target” section of a shortcut. If your string ends up being longer than 260 characters, you can create a .bat/.cmd file containing your string and point your shortcut to that instead. If you want to, you can also change the icon of the shortcut to the 360EE icon by choosing an icon from the 360EE executable; however this is completely optional and is purely visual.
Upon opening using your PsExec shortcut, a command prompt window will open that will look along the lines of this:
You can close this window once the browser has launched, all affinities of new browser processes will inherit the affinity of the initial processes.
Important Notes
One “issue” that you may encounter on all versions is that pages will take time to load and may eventually time out, if the page times out simply reloading the page after it has timed out fixes the issue.
All information in this guide is for educational purposes only. I am not guaranteeing that these browsers will work properly or will be stable on your specific system. All software mentioned above has inherit security risks due to their age or their nature. I suggest you do not use these setups for anything involving sensitive information. You are responsible for your own actions.
