Thread: Windows XP support ending

Originally Posted by Dougal

The OP is clearly a home user. Why are you guys on about business and client data security?

To give a PROFESSIONAL opinion of the situation. Your assumptions that AV products will protect un-patched WinXP is WAY off the mark for reality.

Originally Posted by jonesy63

To give a PROFESSIONAL opinion of the situation. Your assumptions that AV products will protect un-patched WinXP is WAY off the mark for reality.

Lets discuss reality.
I've run XP for 10 years on up to 4 machines concurrently. Still running 3 of those.
That's betwen 30 and 40 years of XP unpatched running AV.

One infection, five years ago.

Originally Posted by Basil135

My laptop is running Win 7, and my pc for the CNC is running XP. When the XP machine dies, I will probably replace it with another one, still running XP. It doesn't do any automatic updates, has no anti-virus, but contains NO data of any use to anyone. It's even has a wireless connection.

Funnily enough, that's exactly what one of my XP machines does. Same setup on a CNC mill with no service packs, no anti-virus and absolutely no problems.
G-code must be a PITA for the malware writers.

Originally Posted by Dougal

Lets discuss reality.
I've run XP for 10 years on up to 4 machines concurrently. Still running 3 of those.
That's betwen 30 and 40 years of XP unpatched running AV.

One infection, five years ago.

Let me give you my perspective. My scope at work is over 260,000 workstations across the world, for the past 13 years. The (mostly new) PC users that click on links from unknown sources get infected all the time. No AV product can protect against that - their signature based technology is always in catch-up mode. As I've said here before, user behaviour is the major reason for infections.

Come on guys, its been 13 years. Time to let go.
I would like to know what all these people are doing that make windows 7 and 8 such a bad experience.
I have used my computer/s for a range of purposes and have never had an issue really.
Although disabling driver signature enforcement in windows 8 is a pain in the ass.
Obviously there are issues when it comes to business use due to software compatibilities etc. But as I said in the starts, 13 YEARS.

Originally Posted by singlecell

Come on guys, its been 13 years. Time to let go.

Yes... Code Red, Code Blue, Nimda... the list goes on and on... So long XP and thanks for all the malware!

Originally Posted by singlecell

Come on guys, its been 13 years. Time to let go.
I would like to know what all these people are doing that make windows 7 and 8 such a bad experience.
I have used my computer/s for a range of purposes and have never had an issue really.
Although disabling driver signature enforcement in windows 8 is a pain in the ass.
Obviously there are issues when it comes to business use due to software compatibilities etc. But as I said in the starts, 13 YEARS.

Better sell your landrovers mate. Landrover stop patching those only a few years after sale.

Originally Posted by Dougal

The OP is clearly a home user. Why are you guys on about business and client data security?

Home PCs are subject to the same security flaws as business machines. Like it or not your home computer 'remembers' much of what happens. Some nasties will trap passwords, user names, and sites they are used. Stored data will allow someone to build a very accurate profile of a user.

It can be hoped that people responsible for security exploits will not worry about XP once it becomes low use, just as they don't write malware for Win 9x anymore. But, as the OP stated, they'll still try the new ones against XP.

You can further protect yourself by logging on as a user, rather than administrator, unless you are installing software or making other system changes. You don't need to password protect the administrator account, although I would incase the nasty trys to log on as an admin. We had a programmer who used this as his sole method of defence, didn't run antimalware because he hated the performance hit. Served him well enough...