Being Forced to Leave Windows XP for Windows 8.1

colin79666

securityguy wrote: »

I'm not sure I'd be as concerned. This is rather theoretical for me as the only XP instance I have is a VM driving an old printer, and it doesn't go near the outside world. But I don't think I'd panic....

Well said. Have you been listening to Security Now by any chance?

Neil_948

I have 2 machines running xp pro one of them passes the win 8 check without any problems how ever when I install it within a matter of running windows update it get's slower and slower to the point where I have tried opening an application such as IE and it has taken upto 10 mins to load. So I have ditched windows 8 in favour for windows 7 so don't just rely on the checker. As for installation if you buy an upgrade version it will automatically put all the xp stuff in a folder called windows.old

securityguy

colin79666 wrote: »

Well said. Have you been listening to Security Now by any chance?

No, Gibson has a cult following, but I'm not a member of his cult.

emptybox

abibee wrote: »

From what I've read, Windows 8.1 is pretty good on older hardware, and even more so with future updates to it, so it should run pretty well on an older computer.

I made the jump to Windows 8.1 and the first thing I installed was Classic Shell, I've not looked back.

I would think Windows 8.1 would only run on a minority of XP era machines?

You would probably have more chance if your machine has an AMD processor than with an Intel machine, because AMD introduced the NX bit feature into AMD64 chips in April 2003, whereas Intel took till August 2004 to introduce the feature into the later P4s.
(Windows 8 simply refuses to install if this feature is not enabled)

Also they'd need 1 GB of RAM as a bare minimum, and realistically 2 GB.

RumRat

Bite the bullet, take a trip into the 21st century and buy another pc to last you the next 20 years.....

spannerzone

RumRat wrote: »

Bite the bullet, take a trip into the 21st century and buy another pc to last you the next 20 years.....

To be fair the OP almost certainly bought their current Windows XP computer in th 21st century

getmore4less

What are you doing on the internet with this computer that clashes with the important stuff you want to keep.

Do you back it up if not thats probably a greater risk than an infection on an older PC.

Could just get a cheap new PC/tablet/netbook/... for the risky internet stuff and carry on using the existing one for the other stuff.

Not sure I would bother if it works, decent firewall and anti virus with some mallware scanning every now and then will keep you safe enough.

App suport will be come an issue eventualy.

RumRat

spannerzone wrote: »

To be fair the OP almost certainly bought their current Windows XP computer in th 21st century

True, but, it was replaced 7 years ago, a lifetime in techworld. I'm not sure I understand the desire to hang on to it in most cases.
Each to there own, but I guess in the OP's case it would be the easiest option just to buy a cheap laptop as a replacement.:)

getmore4less

RumRat wrote: »

True, but, it was replaced 7 years ago, a lifetime in techworld. I'm not sure I understand the desire to hang on to it in most cases.
Each to there own, but I guess in the OP's case it would be the easiest option just to buy a cheap laptop as a replacement.:)

If the old machine does the job then the upgrade can be the base model

£200 for a entry base unit and £300 cheap laptop
(thats the price they have been for years)

cheaper if you can find a model on sell out.

securityguy

RumRat wrote: »

True, but, it was replaced 7 years ago, a lifetime in techworld. I'm not sure I understand the desire to hang on to it in most cases.

I've got a seven year old iMac I'm using as one of our main computers. But it's running Mavericks, has a homebrew Fusion Drive in it and has 4GB of RAM in it. So directly comparable to relatively recent machines and isn't noticeably slower. And as it's running the latest bits, there are no particular software concerns, and I can install the latest versions of everything on it (which isn't true for XP).

However, as you imply, the typical 7 year old machine with XP is going to be rather further behind the curve in every regard.