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Okay, so my wife's PC has XP on it. What should I do--update to Vista or 7, or install a good anti-virus program (and if so, what)?
I think her PC is a dual-core 1.5G or the like, something like that.
The other thing too--I have 2 laptops and a "backroom" PC that all run XP. (My "main" PC is a Windows 8 machine.) Wouldn't it be expensive to get Vista or 7 for all of them? (Or, again, would a good anti-virus program work?) The copy of XP I have, it installs on any machine without needing activation. (Okay, so maybe I was doing something wrong for a long time, but buying Windows for every machine--gee whiz, that gets nuts.)
What are the other PCs? The dual core should be able to run Win7, but you'd want 3-4GB RAM, imo.
Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 3 Users Family Pack Upgrade (if you can still buy it someplace) sold for anywhere from $75 to $150 and upgrades 3 computers from XP or Vista to Win 7. Comes with both 32 and 64 bit installation disks. I wiped XP and did a clean install to a 3GHZ P4 with 4GB RAM and fast SATA hard drive, and a decent video card. It runs passable well, but does hit 100% CPU usage frequently, sometimes pauses, and you have to wait for Internet pages to finish loading at times. I think maybe if it's a clean install, you must call MS to activate it? I can't remember b/c I did this 2 years ago.
(eta: Before you do anything Win7 to the laptops, does the manufacturer have Win 7 drivers for them? Even if Win7 was not officially supported on them, it may be possible w/ some work to track down a slightly later model w/ same mobo & chipset that had a Win7 or Win7 upgrade option and you can grab drivers from it's support page. And of course, generate your restoration disk set and DO NOT wipe that restore partition on the HDs -- just put Win 7 on the C: partition and keep the original hidden partition that has the machine's original software on it. Most laptops sold summer 2009 had Vista w/ Win7 free upgrade option.)
One of the Linux distros like Mint or Ubunto are often recommended, Mint and it's various interfaces being more Windows-like and Ubunto being more Mac-like. I played with both a little but just don't have the time to study them all. Installing Nvidia graphics card drivers was a problem for me. I think I had to do something like put in a PIC or maybe use the ATI AGP card to get the machine up and rolling then go get Nvidia drivers from Internet and do some extra crap to install them b/c of some legal issues or whatever between Nvidia and Linux OSs.
What I am going to do whenever I get time is set up my best P4 for dual boot Mint and Win XP Pro. I have a good photo and slide scanners that are fully supported in Win2000 and Win Xp but not Vista / 7 / 8. So rather than buy a scanner, I will just set up a dedicated oldie machine for scans and not use it for Interned unless it's running Linux. I will probably go back to Mint. Tried openSESE Linux but found it less intuitive than Mint. Ubuntu was just too cutesy of an interface.
Last edited by SorryIMovedBack; 04-09-2014 at 10:30 AM..
btw, for those upgraders: I didn't find it hard at all to go from XP to Vista. Vista, by the time you get all the service packs loaded on it, seemed very stable and trouble-free to me. But I no longer own that Vista laptop. I found the jump from Vista to Win7 to be slightly more puzzling at first, for some reason.
(eta: Before you do anything Win7 to the laptops, does the manufacturer have Win 7 drivers for them? Even if Win7 was not officially supported on them, it may be possible w/ some work to track down a slightly later model w/ same mobo & chipset that had a Win7 or Win7 upgrade option and you can grab drivers from it's support page.
Vista drivers often work if there are no 7 drivers.
Microsoft warned many of its customers that they were on their own earlier this month when it stopped supporting XP, an older but still widespread version of its Windows operating system. The software remains functional, but Microsoft won’t fix its newly discovered security holes, leaving those who haven’t upgraded to a newer version vulnerable to a future hacking attack. It didn’t take long to find one.
Over the weekend, computer security company FireEye said it had noticed a number of attacks on U.S. firms via a vulnerability in various versions of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. If successful, the attacks can force a computer to run code of the attacker’s choosing, which could extract data or send spam.
This is an IE problem - not an XP problem. And they're not "fixing it for XP" because XP will not run any IE version beyond 8.
Users who run other browsers (I've run Firefox for many years) and who have sense enough not to click on links contained in suspicious emails - regardless of browser - have nothing to worry about.
This is an IE problem - not an XP problem. And they're not "fixing it for XP" because XP will not run any IE version beyond 8.
Users who run other browsers (I've run Firefox for many years) and who have sense enough not to click on links contained in suspicious emails - regardless of browser - have nothing to worry about.
I think the real importance of this news today is that it shows that Microsoft is sticking to it's word about no longer supporting XP.
So if you still use XP ... you now need to be extra careful concerning the security of your data.
It doesn't matter that the security issue is part of an older release of Internet Explorer, and not XP itself.
It's the fact that only XP users will be affected, and Microsoft willnot be fixing this security problem.
So once again, today's news article shows that Microsoft is sticking to it's word about no longer supporting XP.
As though that part was ever in doubt.
To suggest or imply that XP users across the board are at risk because of this is misinformation.
Good Day.
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The First Windows XP Security Problem Microsoft Won't Fix
