Windows XP support ended - day 1

almillar

No virus software?
No virus?
How would you know? You've probably got plenty of viruses. Get off the internet!

Johnmcl7

frank777 wrote: »

I had updates this morning on my PC and when I Rebooted my Broadband went down.:eek: I thought it was Microsoft sending a final fix/bug/trojan to help persuade us to Upgrade our systems

:)Not true, it was a Virgin Media fault!


:think:If we've not got MSE (Microsoft Security Essentials) is it best to turn Automatic updates off - support has ended!

Security Essentials on XP will continue to receive definition updates until next year.

John

poppellerant

almillar wrote: »

No virus software?
No virus?
How would you know? You've probably got plenty of viruses. Get off the internet!

I think the sacrifice of a very small amount of speed and time is well worth the peace of mind.

Prevention better than cure?

Lum

If you don't have anything scanning your system for viruses, how do you know you've not got one?

It's not the 90s any more, long gone are the days where viruses were written by jolly pranksters who want to display funny messages on your screen while playing fart noises through your speakers*. These days many of them are writing silent unobtrusive efficient code to quietly steal your data and sell it to identity thieves and suchlike.

Now that XP isn't being updated, any new exploits aren't going to be fixed. This end date has been well known so it's likely that the more intelligent attackers have been keeping exploits they know about quiet so that Microsoft won't detect and fix them, and of course new ones will still be discovered and used.

Unless you want to pay Microsoft £lots, you aren't getting any more fixes for XP.

* Presumably those guys went on to become mobile app developers

OnAndUp

Beaming live from Chrome on XP...Glad to see people are still alive....out there lol!!

Would you Techie folk use Kaspersky on XP if you could get it free through Barclays? Is it any better / safer than Avast which I'm using at the mo?

Thanks!

ps Can't believe anyone would be daft enough not to use AV at all though!?!? :eek: Why? What gain?

AshleyPomeroy

googler wrote: »

This machine hasn't had a virus checker for years, the last time it had one was when I was running MS Vista on it WITH a virus checker, and THAT was the only time I got a virus.

This is one of those "told you so" moments waiting to happen, but I have to say that throughout the late 1990s / early 2000s I didn't bother with anti-virus software, and now I have MSE and nothing else. It's impossible to prove a negative but I'm reasonably confident I do not, and have never had, a virus. If I do it's either completely ineffectual or part of the least aggressive botnet ever.

If a persistent hacker deliberately targets me I would probably succumb in no time; but the same is true of everybody, no matter what they run. With XP however the big issue is that any vulnerabilities discovered in code shared with other Microsoft operating systems will be publicised and patched - but not in XP. If there is a fundamental flaw in the way that Windows XP, Vista, and Windows 7 handle VITAL SECURITY COMPONENT X, it'll be revealed to the world and then patched in Vista and 7, but not XP.

E.g. the recent Heartburn exploit, which isn't a flaw in XP, but what if it had been? It would not be patched and from now until the end of time hackers would be able to read your PC's memory 64kb at a time.

For the most part during my XP years I used either Seamonkey or Firefox and checked my mail with PINE, which is text-based, running in a terminal; now I use Gmail. I tended to visit a small number of websites and ran a handful of (admittedly very complex) multimedia applications (Premiere, Ableton, Photoshop). Hardware-wise I don't think I ever connected anything to my machine beyond a couple of external drives.

If you still have an XP box and simply use it to check the news, the weather, write a few letters, your mail, run a clutch of applications that you didn't get from a Torrent site, and you're reasonably intelligent, then... well, you're still vulnerable. Probably far less than someone running a patched Windows 7 Ultimate who spends his days installing torrented software and downloading free plane tickets from some Russian floozy who met him on a Nigeria chat site etc.

Esqui

almillar wrote: »

No virus software?
No virus?
How would you know? You've probably got plenty of viruses. Get off the internet!

This! Relatively few viruses scream and shout "Hey! I'm a virus!" and put brightly-coloured messages all over the screen.


How do you know you haven't got a keylogger buried away inside your system sending the passwords you're typing back to a smiling hacker?

This machine hasn't had a virus checker for years, the last time it had one was when I was running MS Vista on it WITH a virus checker, and THAT was the only time I got a virus.

I know what you mean. Last time I went to the doctor, he said I had an infection. I haven't been to see him for several month, and I've not had an infection since, so I'll carry on not going to the doctor.

John259

almillar wrote: »

No virus software?
No virus?
How would you know?

The Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool will find the common viruses. With Windows XP and later it's installed every month by Windows Updates, then automatically run in background and only appears on screen if it finds anything nasty. You can run it manually whenever you wish:
Start > Run > mrt.exe
Presumably it won't be updated for XP from now on, but AFAIK the last XP version should remain installed.

IMHO it's also a very good idea to run a MalwareBytes scan on a regular basis, perhaps once a week.

Jivesinger

OnAndUp wrote: »

Would you Techie folk use Kaspersky on XP if you could get it free through Barclays? Is it any better / safer than Avast which I'm using at the mo?

Kaspersky generally does well in comparison tests like this one. So yes if you can get it free, I would probably prefer it to Avast.

It doesn't mean you're totally immune to some possible issues which might affect XP, of course.

mioliere

Have just found this: http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/windows-xp-whats-happening-now/

and this:

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/upgrade-windows-xp-modern-os-7-simple-steps/

These seem to make sense of things; at least, I think they do!