I have an old local installation of MikTeX 2.9.6361 on a machine and want to update without access to the internet. Therefore I thought the easiest is to download a full repo with miktexsetup_standalone --verbose --local-package-repository=C:\temp\miktex --package-set=complete download and afterwards point either the GUI or the CLI package manager (yes this was still a MikTeX version without Console) to this folder and perform the update.
However after a successful download of more than 5000 files, performing a mpm --repository=C:\temp\miktex --find-updates yields Sorry, but "MiKTeX Package Manager" did not succeed. and the log reads 2022-01-04 23:40:32,854+0100 FATAL mpmcli - Not a package repository.
The same happens when using the GUI and pointing to the directory, thereafter I am told Message: C:\temp\miktex does not seem to be a local package repository.
With earlier versions of MikTeX I understood, that as long as the main version remains the same, one can update from the repo, only a change from 2.8 to 2.9 required a new installation. Why does my MikTeX 2.9.6361 not recognize the current repo as a correct one? Did I miss something during the download, or is there an issue with the big version gap?