End of Windows XP - what now?

I think you misunderstand me to be advocating using XP still. Certainly not and I've been free of it for quite a while now. I'm merely playing devils advocate as the "patch brigade" particularly annoy me.
 
petersmart said:
Not at all since each one is rendering a different film or episode of a boxset.
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But that is what an OS does... run several different programs at once. You don't need to isolate them in different VMs, just run 8 things in parallel on one OS each one running one thread and in different subdirectories. I'm 99.999% certain it will be faster that way.
 
I use my old XP laptop for my weather station software only. I uninstalled Internet Security Essentials yesterday and downloaded Avast, which I have used in the past and found to be quite good. I hope that should sort out any security issues.

I also have an old Vista laptop, which I could use if/when the XP machine gives up completely, but I suppose it's only a matter of time before that becomes obsolete.:(
 
Ooer I seem to stirred up a few things!

However New pc ordered, old pc will have little online use & then kept as standalone.

Thanks again for everyone's advice!
 
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On a slightly different note when I get new Pc tomorrow which AV & FW would people recommend? Have used commodore/ avg and avast in the past but ended up with MSE recently.

I stopped using commodo because at one point it became very resource hungry, AVG started off ok but again seem to get a bit bloated. Avast suddenly decided it didn't like any firewall i installed & caused loads of issues so I ended up with MSE which to be fair seemed to do the job along with Zone Alarm Firewall for the last year.

Just wondering what recommendations are for my new one which will be running Win7. Have seen good reviews for commodo AV & FW suite and Avast - or shall I stick to MSE & zone alarm?
 
Blackwijet said:
On a slightly different note when I get new Pc tomorrow which AV & FW would people recommend? Have used commodore/ avg and avast in the past but ended up with MSE recently.
I stopped using commodo because at one point it became very resource hungry, AVG started off ok but again seem to get a bit bloated. Avast suddenly decided it didn't like any firewall i installed & caused loads of issues so I ended up with MSE which to be fair seemed to do the job along with Zone Alarm Firewall for the last year.
Just wondering what recommendations are for my new one which will be running Win7. Have seen good reviews for commodo AV & FW suite and Avast - or shall I stick to MSE & zone alarm?
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On my home Windows 8.1 boxes, I don't run any additional AV or FW software on them. I didn't run anything other than MSE on Windows 7.

My ASUS router has a fairly aggressive firewalling setup.

That said, I use a secure-ish browser (IE11 + EMET), my browsing habits are fairly conservative (no dodgy sites for me) and informed (no, Mr Website, you may not scan my computer for problems), I block ads with AdBlock Plus for IE (has the good side effect of breaking Huffington Post, thus stopping me visiting that pile of cack site) and I don't have Java installed.

If you go to the kind of sites that throw a lot of pop-ups, you use Java and/or a less secure browser, you may want to take extra measures.

You know what you use your computer for, and you should tailor your security response accordingly.
 
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Since going to Vista onwards, I have always just used Windows built in firewall.

AV wise, I use ESET on some computers and MSE on the rest.
 
Can anyone recommend a good value source of Win7? I need 7 for the XP compat mode :(
 
I run XP in a Virtualbox VM on OS X for the sole purpose of occasionally managing the users on our office door control system.

I never open a web browser and there are no other Windows computers on our LAN - everything else is either OS X or Linux.

I think I'm fairly safe. :-?
 
For those wanting 7 for xp mode, 8 Pro includes client hyper v which is more secure...
 
i highly recommend bitdefender for antivirus. It offers excellent protection and has a really low impact on your system, freeing up resources for the rest of the system.

You should avoid using Microsoft Essentials as Microsoft themselves admit that it is basic and doesn't offer complete protection.
 
Just started getting 8 or so emails pointing me to obviously dubious sites. All purporting to come from the same person. I sent him a txt warning of a possible infection. Before he even read the txt, he was on the phone to me asking about issues on his machine. I asked him which OS he used and, yep, you guessed it. It's started already.
 
I recently had a hard disk problem with an ageing pc. It meant that the current installation of XP was no longer bootable, but the rest of the PC was fine. I simply bought a new hard drive and was then faced with the dilemma of re-installing XP, or going another route. Given the impending demise of support for XP, this happened back in february, I chose to move away from the microsoft platform and installed Ubuntu instead. Costs nothing, plenty of support out there and runs really quickly even on my old hardware (apart from the new hard disk).

Only really used the PC for email, web browsing etc. Ubuntu comes with a whole world of free apps that provide most of your basic needs. Seems to be plenty of support for security features too.

Certainly worth taking a look.
 
If you're going Linux, try Mint, not Ubuntu. It tends to be a little too bleeding edge and will occasionally break (and I develop Linux device drivers for a living....).
 
2blue4u said:
Can you elaborate on the 8 Pro client hyper whatever thingumy?
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Hyper-v is MS's virtualization software, as used in enterprise etc. Similar to VMWare but obviously I'd say better. 8 Pro has it built in so can act as a VM host for other OSs including XP. Hyper-V is enterprise grade, compared to the more consumer based Virtual PC technology in 7, so there is solid isolation between host and VM which adds some extra protection - I.e. the VM is sandboxes from host. That doesn't mean it is risk free though, a compromised OS on the VM can still do other damage....
 
2blue4u said:
Just started getting 8 or so emails pointing me to obviously dubious sites. All purporting to come from the same person. I sent him a txt warning of a possible infection. Before he even read the txt, he was on the phone to me asking about issues on his machine. I asked him which OS he used and, yep, you guessed it. It's started already.
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Started already?

That's been doing the rounds for years!
 
landwomble said:
Hyper-v is MS's virtualization software, as used in enterprise etc. Similar to VMWare but obviously I'd say better.
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Do you think hyper-v is easier to set up and use than ESXi / vSphere? I don't. Maybe it works better in an active directory environment, but in ours (workgroup, we have no need for a domain) it doesn't.
 
When I was in a branch of the Halifax the other day they restarted one of their cash machines and to my surprise it booted up windows XP - is my money safe!? :runaway::runaway:;)
 
I know you were only kidding but they run XP embedded with a custom MS support agreement in a VERY secure environment. So yes, your money is just as safe as 6 months ago :)
 
neil_g said:
Hyper v is a piece of proverbial to set up. Ad or not.
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I'm not sure whether by "proverbial" you mean number ones (so very easy) or number twos (so a right PITA). I'm in the "right PITA" camp. Edited highlights of my trials and tribulations :

I could not get RSAT to connect to the server when running the standalone version of hyper v. I found a lot of other people saying the same thing and lots of ranty blog posts. Some contained useful information. I worked through all of them, reconfiguring as I went to eliminate errors and eventually got to a point where the script I found that diagnosed errors said the client was correctly configured and the server was correctly configured ... and still they wouldn't talk to each other.

Ended up installing 2012R2 and enabling the hyper-v role on that. At least I could run the HV manager directly on the server to import my VMs from vsphere, but at present can only use them directly on the server. I think because the VMs are not from "pro" or "ultimate" windows installs RDP won't talk to them from my desktop. Unless there's a client end to hyper-v that allows VMs to be accessed remotely without using the RDP client, just as vsphere has a dedicated client. I've not been able to find one though.

I want to access them remotely as hyper V has no USB passthrough (!!!) when used directly on the server and apparently it can be worked around if remoted in.


Still, none of that lot compares with the bizarre network problem I had yesterday which I eventually tracked down to both of my Dell t5400 computers having the same MAC address.

Apologies for going all ranty, it's been a struggle this week. I'm only doing all of this so I can test my code when run in virtualised environments, it's not like we're going to embark on some massive virtualisation project in the office.
 
onomatopoeia said:
Do you think hyper-v is easier to set up and use than ESXi / vSphere? I don't. Maybe it works better in an active directory environment, but in ours (workgroup, we have no need for a domain) it doesn't.
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I'd say it was "better" in terms of integrating to a large enterprise environment that uses system centre, basically. Basic virtualization is comparable between esx and hyper v, it's a commodity. The difference is in the management and operational layer that drives it. I'm biased though! ;-)
 
And how safe is anything if you are willing to chop it to bits to interface with it, physical access to the machine was required so it wasn't the standard remote hack we usually associate with security flaws
 
Hyper-v from 2008 r2 onwards is a piece of pee.

There is some differences between everything in the same domain compared to domain to workgroup etc. but nothing one script with switches can't handle.
 
Hvremote is the script to use.
 
Dale_tem said:
Hvremote is the script to use.
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Which was the script I was using, and it claimed that the client and server were both correctly configured and could talk to each other. RSAT was not of the same opinion.

It's moot now, I've solved it another way.
 
arad85 said:
If you're going Linux, try Mint, not Ubuntu. It tends to be a little too bleeding edge and will occasionally break (and I develop Linux device drivers for a living....).
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Mint is good. But so is Kubuntu. You get the slickness and quality of Ubuntu without the Ubuntu broken UI. I also have Xubuntu on my oldest PC. Which is nice to use, but appears to lack some goodies that Mint and Kubuntu have.
 
most of your stuff in xp will be fine it will still get updated its just xp is not getting actual support in my opinion your better off upgrading to ubuntu you dont need a anti virus there a good load of photogrpajhy editing sofware all free and thousands of other free programs if you dont surf much then it would be perfect for you i currently use ubuntu 12.04 and i love it its also got long term support for the next 5 years there is always a new free update version as well give it a try by using a live distro
 
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