The equivalent date to April 8, 2014 for Windows Vista is in 2017, for Windows 7 in 2020 and for Windows 8 in 2023. So plan ahead, people.
That guy isn’t me but:
My standard threat management involves not opening sketchy attachments/files, not opening sketchy websites, and blocking ads. Malicious ads seems to be a big thing now.
I do not have any sort of firewall on my computer and leave my antivirus turned totally off until I do a routine check. I don’t believe I’ve done any service updates in about a year.
Comes back clean. All of my computers have been clean for 5 years now, and the last time I had malware was because I stupidly opened a sketchy torrented file that wouldn’t run until I unzipped it. I am not afraid of taking Windows 98 or XP machines on the internet.
I’m not saying this is ideal or even the proper way to run a machine, but with preventative measures in your own computer use you can go far without trouble.
I simply don’t like installing windows updates because I figure if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Windows has a tendency to eat itself after a few years of various tinkerings of that sort, and I always groan over OS re-installs regardless of how fast they go.
There’s being the problem through ignorance, and then there is the problem through wilful ignorance. One of these is forgiveable.
Aside from using Avast and Malwarebytes, uninstalling Java, and leaving Javascript off most of the time, I also run Firefox in a sandbox using Sandboxie. It’s very easy to use, and the idea is that even if something from a website gets past all the other defenses, it won’t make it out of the sandbox. Anyone who is going to go without updates should be using it.
Microsoft made their current support policy public in 2002, and promised 10 years of support for OSes.
I am definitely sympathetic to people who don’t want to have to buy a new computer and can’t buy another Microsoft OS that supports their current hardware. On the other hand, it’s not reasonable to expect Microsoft to support old products in perpetuity. They’ve already supported this one for two years longer than they promised to. At some point, they have to move on.
And it’s not like Microsoft is going to actively break anything. They’re just going to stop fixing bugs that people find in the future. Anyone who has old software that can’t run on a virtual machine and can’t run on newer versions of Windows can still keep an XP machine running for many years. They probably just shouldn’t connect it to the internet without some careful firewalls in place.
When 31% of the desktop base still uses XP, it is not time to move on. The fact that this was announced in 2002 is a fair point though let’s remember that MS’s plans are guidelines only. But that tells me they should be charging $30-$50 per year per machine, not forcing 500 million PCs into an early grave.
Carmady: Nice tip about Sandboxie. Thanks.
Q for anybody: XP tends to be installed on older machines. What are the recommended anti-malware packages?
My take, FWIW:
Avast tends to easy on resources though it’s not the most stringent screen. Avira got good reviews for catching lots of viruses a couple of years ago. What about Firewalls? I’ve had decent experiences with Comodo on my Vista machine. ZoneAlarm used to be great, but at some point became clunky. XP’s built in firewall was lame. Malwarebytes is a great addon. Superantispyware is ok. Adblockers enhance security: I say this with a sigh as I am ambivalent about denying ad revenue to content providers.
I don’t currently run XP though.
If we wait for people to be ready, we’d wait forever.
I’d love to see some numbers on how many of those desktops are XP only because management hasn’t been forced to change to something else.
And also on how many of them couldn’t run Windows 7 or 8.
Perhaps you should consider the possibility that they cannot upgrade? Certain of their applications may not work on subsequent versions of Windows.
As a trivial example, I occasionally play TOCA. The copy protection system doesn’t work on later versions of Windows, so I have a XP box which spends most of its time in a corner.
Serious question, not snark: What’s stopping MS from making their operating systems fully backward compatible? What are the technical problems involved in making my older software run on a newer OS? If that were possible it would obviate a lot of users’ complaints in this thread.
For private individuals, this is all well and good - but businesses should consider this an urgent stimulus to find a different solution. Building in reliance on legacy software - although it may be done for reasons of cost saving in the short term - makes for sudden, catastrophic failure in the future (which itself is very costly).
I’ve seen it happen time and again - most recently, I saw a group of customer scratching around on eBay and elsewhere, trying to source some PalmOS handhelds so they could continue using a bit of surveying software they bought 15 years ago.
This won them another 6 months of use, at which point they were cut off anyway because the PC client software won’t run on Windows 7.
There was all kinds of pleading and bargaining, but ultimately, they had just painted themselves into a corner - There was literally no way to make it work - there is no support from any of the suppliers for what they were trying to do (the supplier of the PalmOS app doesn’t even exist any more).
It’s an unfortunate reality of the computing world that things move on - old things become obsolete and unsupportable - nothing lasts for ever - many things last shorter than it seems they ought to, but this is the way it is - it’s the bitter flipside of us always wanting newer, shinier stuff to drool over.
From today onwards, it seems like it ought to be possible (but that’s most likely just because I can’t see the future) - looking backwards, a couple of the reasons why legacy code had to stop being supported:
The transition from Window 9x to Windows NT family was a big watershed, because under the NT family, programs could not directly talk to hardware - it all had to go through an intermediary thing called the Hardware Abstraction Layer - this was regarded as a nuisance by some, but it’s a solid design feature that makes a computer more stable in many ways.
The transition from 16 bit to 32 bit, now to 64 bit processing - at each step, there was some support for the previous level - by means of emulation of compatibility layers, but there’s little or no support for 16 bit code in pure 64 bit Windows - because it would require either two nested emulation layers. or effort expended in writing a brand new one.
And that last bit the real reason - as any bit of technology falls toward legacy, it requires more effort to integrate with current technology - if MS were to guarantee backward compatibility indefinitely, there would soon come a point where they were expending greater effort on keeping the wheels on the old stuff than on innovation and native support for the newer stuff. That doesn’t seem like a viable business model to me.
It is possible but requires a lot of thought/planning/design up front to pull it off.
IBM did it with the as400, the interface to the hardware (including the CPU and instructions) is all abstracted so the same code that ran on the original machine runs today without recompile despite numerous CPU changes, change to 64 bit in the 90’s, change from CISC to RISC etc.
I don’t know what that means. How many 1995 cars are on the road because drivers haven’t been forced to change to something else? 2004 cars? How many washing machines are still in use because owners haven’t been forced to upgrade?
News flash: the world should not revolve around Microsoft’s convenience.
And the problem with that is? Recall that Vista has 2% market penetration and the Win 2000 end of life support passed without much notice. People will upgrade when it makes sense for them.
As another example, my copy of Matlab runs on XP, but not on Win7. Admittedly I can’t recall whether I tried a virtual environment. Matlab has a more recent version, but it costs thousands$.
500 million PCs. 708 million cubic feet of electronics, enough to fill up the Grand Canyon six times[sup]1[/sup]. Down the shitter.
Many will become bots for all manner of computer criminals. So how should an XP machine be hardened? Say you’ve decided to normally keep it offline.
0. First upgrade everything, run antiviral, antispyware, whatever. Note there have been a couple of Win Office security patches released this fall.
- Acquire an off line anti-viral. Recommendations?
- Tack on malwarebytes, which is complementary. Recommended spyware package?
- Disable autorun in USB ports to prevent malware infection.
- Backups, backups, backup.
- Take an image of the PC. I haven’t tried it, but consider this piece of software which does backups and imaging: Introduction to backup | PCWorld
- Try installing Comodo firewall, then disabling it if you can. Otherwise, just a keep a copy ready on the hard drive.
- Sandboxie.
- Uninstall Java.
- Full Adblocking.
- Disable Javascript in the browsers.
- And practice safe computing. Tentacle searches should be conducted on other machines. Though a lot of malware is apparently delivered via ads on mainstream websites.
[sup]1[/sup] Ha, ha, not remotely: it’s about 5/1000th of a cubic mile. Still: it’s a lotta electronics. Some of the units will be re-purposed for Linux of course, while others will address the nation’s pressing shortage of doorstops.
I’m not quite seeing how refusing to provide free OS support and patching until Measure for Measure has decided you’ve met his arbitrary standard qualifies as expecting the world to revolve around you.
Who said free? I spoke of rather inflated charges of $30-$50 per year. Arbitrary? It’s 31% of the market! Remember, nobody complained when Win2000 was phased out- and that was also a stable system.
On the one hand we have 500 million PCs destined for landfill, Linux or the most terrifying botnet known to man[sup]1[/sup]. On the other hand we have a monopolist, one of the most profitable companies on the planet, which owes its success largely to the skillful manipulation of network externalities. Recall that Windows 8 sucks: ask anybody who has tried to make it work with multiple monitors.
Hm. Should we side with the one or the many? Or both!
[sup]1[/sup] BWAHAHAHAHAAHA!!!1!
Well" those who cannot be named" are basically saying poor people should pound salt. Some of us are getting tired of paying good money for the privilege of being Microsoft’s beta testers. If the goddamn thing is vulnerable then it’s a defective product. We paid for a working product and it’s not our vault that it takes XP version 7.∞ to make it work. No other product would be tolerated if it required patches to make it work every 3 months.
If XP was sold in 2010 then they can damn well support it longer.
Or Windows 7, or 8. Unless you can actually cite that most of them won’t be able to run it.
Huh? Windows 8 has the best multi-monitor support of any version. It’s still not perfect, but there exist tools that fix that. It works well enough for me without them though.
Oh, the many definitely. The minority who still use XP should upgrade.
Frankly, someone who bought an XP computer in 2010 was not thinking clearly.
All companies eventually stop supporting their products. If you don’t like their timeline on support, buy a different company’s product. If you can’t manage to scrape together 300 dollars for a new laptop every 4-5 years, then you have larger financial issues that should be addressed.