R.I.P Windows XP 2002 - 2014

[ArcadeWilliamz]

Sad news for Windows XP users. Microsoft is shutting down support for Windows XP which gives a opportunity for hackers. Here's the full news report here.

 

VIDEO LINK:http://www.examiner.com/play-video/video-portal/microsoft-drops-windows-xp-support?cid=PROG-TechDM-Video-WindowsXPSupport-040714-9.00am

[Shmoopy]

Shutting down the support won't necessarily give opportunities for hackers , it just means that softwares coming in the future will not be XP compatible , thats all . You can use XP as long as you want , it wont be a risk . I guess it was just a strategy from Microsoft to get people out of XP and directly jump to Windows 8 that didn't do well in selling .

[sivispacem]

A 12 year OS lifecycle is just silly. In the context of OS version lifecycles it's absurdly long.

 

Manfred- yes, it does mean that XP will be vulnerable to hackers. It's Microsoft who are ending support for it, not third parties. That means no vulnerability updates and no fixes to exploits, and given that most of the later versions of Windows use the sane framework and share the basic NT kernel attacks against later versions are usually replicable on earlier ones. Very risky for implementations that require high levels of data security like banking and healthcare. They also tend to be amongst the slowest to upgrade as they often have custom applications written entirely for older Windows builds.

[Th3MaN1]

Well, I still use XP, so I'm getting somewhat paranoid.

[Kryten.]

Very risky for implementations that require high levels of data security like banking and healthcare. They also tend to be amongst the slowest to upgrade as they often have custom applications written entirely for older Windows builds.

 

Similar thing for businesses, although thats mostly due to costs.

 

I work in a large scale retail company and the vast majority of PCs still run XP and Office 2003. Once you take into account approx 4-10 PCs per store, across 300 stores and then add up regional and national offices you end up talking thousands of PCs. 95% of which are running XP. The cost of upgrading them all is one of the main reasons they haven't updated yet.

[sivispacem]

The only XP machines we have are the ones we intentionally infect with malware so we can analyse what it does. XP use has dropped significantly; it's now below about 15% but that's still dangerously high given that we're seeing remote code execution flaws in Windows on an almost weekly basis now.

[dice]

A 12 year OS lifecycle is just silly. In the context of OS version lifecycles it's absurdly long.

Some embedded systems built on XP still have support until 2019. Wonder if anyone'll try to port the updates for normal XP machines

Edited April 8, 2014 by dice

[Spider-Vice]

XP Embedded and Windows Fundamentals have different architectures, so porting updates won't work. Most machines, even old Pentium 4's support Windows 7 easily and maybe even faster than XP, I don't see why a lot of people still use XP.

Edited April 9, 2014 by Spider-Vice

[sivispacem]

Mainly because 7 is still £80 a pop and lots of older applications need to be entirely rebuilt to run properly on later versions of Windows, particularly those that require Mozilla 4.0 rather than 5.0 browsers like those on later Windows versions.

[SoftTouch]

Should have stopped supporting Windows Vista. That OS is....

[Slamman]

As it happens I'd recently gotten Vista Home Premium restore disc set for Acer, particular models 5620 Extensa, but I moved that drive to another Acer, earlier single core Sonoma Intel and it worked for a short time, but then says the COA is invalid, cutting me off from most Windows features and a normal logon, only allowing IE to WWW to buy a COA, this is highly unusual for a restore disc.

I bought and got XP install discs along with Windows 2000 for Dell, and they've been one of the reasons I stuck with Dell for so long, but sadly, Microsoft changed policies with regard to those fresh formats, even if never EVER used before, you're required to register most of them,

I had to do this in the instance of a Vista Business fresh install from a DELL original disc and still needed a COA, but I had one thankfully.

For swapping machines with, XP is far more forgiving, you just remove key specific drivers and reinstall. I would even install an OS and then swap HDDs to the intended system to complete driver and setup.

 

Gone will be those days

[K20]

still using XP SP3..... loving it!

[sivispacem]

Enjoy gradually fading into obscurity.

[GN 92]

I upgraded all our machines to 7 Ultimate 64

 

No way I'm moving to 8.

[SoftTouch]

I recommend upgrading to 8.1 or 8 if you wish. The game performance is not much, but a bit better.

[GN 92]

I recommend upgrading to 8.1 or 8 if you wish. The game performance is not much, but a bit better.

 

My dad's notebook OS is Windows 8, and I just can't get used to it.. no matter how much I try..

 

Guess I'll stick with 7 until they release something more "old school" like XP or 7

[Stinky12]

Microsoft is charging enterprise customers and goverment to keep XP alive for 1 year.

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/04/not-dead-yet-dutch-british-governments-pay-to-keep-windows-xp-alive/

 

[DEALUX]

Most machines, even old Pentium 4's support Windows 7 easily and maybe even faster than XP, I don't see why a lot of people still use XP.

I really doubt that. I still use XP on my scrap heap of a computer and it runs faster than Vista, 7, and Linux (I tried Ubuntu and Lubuntu, both perform a bit worse).

 

I am planning on buying a new PC this year and I'm thinking of switching to Linux in the meantime, but the distros I've tested so far don't offer any real improvements in terms of performance. Web browsing seems to be a lot faster on XP and of course there's the sh*tty Flash player support on Linux (non-SSE2 CPUs can't run the updated version of the plugin made for Chrome).

 

Still, I think that if I keep a low profile on the Internet the chances of getting infected with malware are relatively small. I remember going months with no antivirus software and Windows updates and my PC ran fine. No infections seemed to occur.

[Slamman]

I've ran Vista on a Pentium Centrino mobile Dell Lat and it didn't work smooth, I would keep sticking with Windows 2000 or XP on older gen machines, for one thing, they aren't memory hogs, and at most, run in as small a space as possible.

 

This is a real help for smaller drives on average, however, I was able to boot from a Compact Flash card on an old P4 machine and even P3 should work, formatting XP to something like that should garner you faster performance.

I think perhaps Vista vs Windows 7 saw some memory usage corrections from Microsoft. The limits of 9X Windows is memory management as well, 32bit, but there are plenty of software packages still working under 32bit hardware.

 

As mentioned above too, you should have more then one machine to rely on in terms of hardware and OS, the most important marriage you decide on is not what's stored on the HDD but mating drivers and OS to each machine. You live with that the longest. Don't expect the Swiss Army knife of computers approach when you're living with a machine for more then a year! Also, you can't really find one machine that tackles everything with aplumb

 

I'd concur about where you opt to surf, stay in safe Internet zones with XP and keep third party protection updating as long as they support XP

Edited April 11, 2014 by Slamman

[sivispacem]

Still, I think that if I keep a low profile on the Internet the chances of getting infected with malware are relatively small. I remember going months with no antivirus software and Windows updates and my PC ran fine. No infections seemed to occur.

There was a point a few weeks ago when over 100 sites on the Alexa Top 10,000 were compromised and hosting exploits. Had we been a couple of Patch Tuesdays down the line, those would have all been nice new remote code execution vulnerabilities in the Windows kernel that hadn't been patched on XP.

 

You are more at risk than you might think.

[DEALUX]

Well, I'm not a server. I would totally switch to Linux right now but I really dislike the fact that it is so counterintuitive. Even a task like installing a program can give you headaches sometimes. I couldn't even find some of the programs I installed on Lubuntu. Ubuntu is a lot more organized but it has bloatware installed and Unity kinda sucks.

Edited April 12, 2014 by Criѕtian

[sivispacem]

Why do you think it matters that you're not a server? Low-hanging fruit- that is, desktops of casual users- is far more valuable to crimeware malware writers than servers are- simple economies of scale.

[Slamman]

Source I heard from thinks newer OSes are where hackers are moving to, portable devices, mobile devices.

Windows 8, etc. Popular browsers also targeted like the sites frequented most.

 

XP will now be a harder sell on older machines, but I wouldn't consider WinME for online either, just use on lower end systems that can run a vast catalog of old gen software

[Otter]

What's the big problem with Windows 8? I don't understand all the hate. Is it just because it defaults to the stupid gui? Aside from being purely cosmetic, I've read it's the work of clicking one check box in the settings to use the traditional layout.

[Sami Uso]

I still use Windows XP, but only because I'm poor as f*ck.

[sivispacem]

Source I heard from thinks newer OSes are where hackers are moving to, portable devices, mobile devices.

Well your source is half-right. There's been a move towards targeting mobile platforms and the IoT but the largest targets in terms of scale are still desktop/laptop/workstations for criminal enterprise and core servers for state-sponsored badness. An exploit in something like a browser or plugin is fine for dropping malware but it's the vulnerabilities in the operating system which enable the really nasty stuff to go undetected.

[Eminem!]

Well, I use Windows 98.

[sivispacem]

Well, I use Windows 98.

Ahh, unsupported for 8 years.

[Shmoopy]

I still use Windows XP, but only because I'm poor as f*ck.

I never bought anything Microsoft (except for a web cam) , do you thing that people would bother spending their money on stuff like these when others get to download them for free ? ( torrents for example )

Edited April 13, 2014 by Manfred Von Karma

[Sami Uso]

 

I still use Windows XP, but only because I'm poor as f*ck.

I never bought anything Microsoft (except for a web cam) , do you thing that people would bother spending their money on stuff like these when others get to download them for free ? ( torrents for example )

 

Well, I really don't like to torrent stuff like that because if I get caught by MS it could be a big issue. But if it was free, hey, I'd take advantage of it! But only if MS released it for free.

Edited April 14, 2014 by TensaZangetsu