If you are still running XP please read.

[gary6204]

I continue to use the old laptops (I have several) I have that are only capable of running xp (I had vista on one and that was a bad idea), but I plan to keep using it after the cut off date as there's just about nothing I can use on there (the on board graphics and the processor suck) except maybe some old windows 98 or xp games that i played as a child . Plus its also my newest laptop and I can't afford a new one.
However, @johnwhelan,
Thank you for the word of advice. I will be more closely monitoring what I do on it after, and maybe even before that date
Thanks

 

[amigacooke]

April 8th 2014 Microsoft withdraws support for XP. Does it matter well yes. Unfortunately Microsoft will still be sending out security updates for Vista, Win7 and Win 8. These days the majority of Malware comes from people examining the security updates that Microsoft sends out to see what the vulnerability is then they try it on all the versions of Windows.

So if a vulnerability exists and is closed in Win 7 then it will be published to the malware people and and not closed in XP. In a twelve month period thirty Win 7 / Win 8 patches were also applicable to XP.

So if you do decide to continue in XP after April 8th then the advice would be not to use it for anything that involves credit cards and not to use it for any passwords such as gmail or PAYPAL since the accounts will probably be compromised.

Cheerio John

Thanks John, sensible advice.

 

[ex-railwayman]

I run XP never upgraded it never had a problem, I'm on the inter web always. I havn't run a virus scanner in the last 6 years never had a problem, what am I doing wrong, my puter should have crashed an blown up years ago.

Cheers

Lots

Haha, well said Lots, I'm a diehard XP supporter and never had any problems, in 10 years, I generally ignore these folks whose PC's have blown up 6 months after purchasing them, I often ask myself if they should be allowed to operate such highly technical engineering hardware unsupervised.......:hehe:

Thanks for the heads up young John, I'm weeping silently that XP will become unsupported in April, but, times move on and I'm all geared up to upgrade to a WIN 7 machine very soon.

Cheerz. ex-railwayman.

 

[BLACKWATCH]

I currently have 3 H/D's in my machine, 1 for TS2010 & Silent Hunter, 1 for Win.XP 32bit + general use & a new SSD with Win.7 Pro 64bit & TS12
I run dual boot between XP & Win.7, I shall gradually move stuff across to Win.7 but will keep XP because some older stuff runs better on it.

Like Lendorf, I also have a good old Amiga to fall back on, mine's an 'A1200 Z4' tower.

 

[geophil]

April 8th 2014 Microsoft withdraws support for XP.

They already changed their policy once again: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-25758308

Of course, they are experts in alienating customers. But cutting support for almost 30% of the world's PCs did take some courage. Unfortunately for MS, it won't help win 8 sales.

 

[clam1952]

Not unsurprising for Microsoft, still got a way to go until April so anything is possible, even another stay of execution. July 2015? would that be about when Windows 9, which is supposedly going to address the unpopular aspects of 8 and 8.1, is due to appear? Wonder if MS will be offering cheap upgrades to XP users.............

 

[johnwhelan]

They already changed their policy once again: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-25758308

Of course, they are experts in alienating customers. But cutting support for almost 30% of the world's PCs did take some courage. Unfortunately for MS, it won't help win 8 sales.

Read it again, there is no change in policy or in what I said. Microsoft XP antivirus product will be updated to look for new viruses that is MSE, XP itself will not be updated.

On the same topic I assume that every one running XP realises that T2 will not run under XP 32 bit which is what every one running XP runs and that to see any benefit from a 64 bit operating system at all you'll need to have at least 6 gigs of memory.

Cheerio John

 

[Franklin_Prestage]

... which is what every one running XP runs ...

I beg to differ with you my good man. I am currently running a 64-bit version of XP and have been for quite a few years. It is, I admit, a dual-boot with Ubuntu LINUX, but nevertheless it is XP Professional 64-bit. I have it kitted out with 8GB of RAM also.

Cheers, Franklin.

 

[RRSignal]

I too run XP-64, as well as XP-32.

Even if T:ANE doesn't support XP-64, no biggie. I'll have an installation of Win7 Pro 64 as one partition on my offline gaming rig. I'll still rely on XP for most of my everyday stuff, probably for the next 5 years at least.

 

[geophil]

When Microsoft announced Visual Studio 2012 with no XP support, initially not even runtime support, many developers quickly decided stay away from the new version altogether. Problem is that MS's miscalculations in the last few years caused a lot of damage in the hard- and software business in the more traditional application fields.

 

[johnwhelan]

I beg to differ with you my good man. I am currently running a 64-bit version of XP and have been for quite a few years. It is, I admit, a dual-boot with Ubuntu LINUX, but nevertheless it is XP Professional 64-bit. I have it kitted out with 8GB of RAM also.

Cheers, Franklin.

Now I am impressed we could never get the drivers to work in the labs for even fairly mainstream products. I think its market share was something like less than 1% of 32 bit XP.

Cheerio John

 

[JCitron]

Haha, well said Lots, I'm a diehard XP supporter and never had any problems, in 10 years, I generally ignore these folks whose PC's have blown up 6 months after purchasing them, I often ask myself if they should be allowed to operate such highly technical engineering hardware unsupervised.......:hehe:

Thanks for the heads up young John, I'm weeping silently that XP will become unsupported in April, but, times move on and I'm all geared up to upgrade to a WIN 7 machine very soon.

Cheerz. ex-railwayman.

I've wondered the same too, having dealt with many, many office workers over the years. I truly wonder how they can even drive a car some days.

As has been said here, it mostly boils down to being aware of ones surroundings while using computers. For years I never used and antivirus package, that was until the PCs were moved to my bro's office. A client visited and without permission put in a floppy disk. We had just installed the older version of Norton Utilities and Antivirus on the machine. This was back when Norton was a great product, long before Symantec bought them out. Sirens went off and the client looked at us with a dismayed look. The disk was infected with the Monkey virus which infects boot sectors of disks.

The fact that the product caught the infection made me feel a bit better that it worked, and the fact that the machine was now in a public location, with full on-line internet an ISDN company network service, meant the machine was vulnerable.

Right now things are in transition with XP and Windows 7/8.x. As the operating systems evolve, there will be less and less chances of being infected using the old operating systems. Let's face it the malware creator will be creating for the future rather than going after the fewer and fewer older machines.

The problem too with scripted malware, which plays with system functions rather than system disruption, is it can get into a system and be ignored by the installed antivirus product. It goes undetected because it's performing functions that are done "normally". The antivirus product will detect the virus activity after the fact once it starts downloading the dropper utilities and other things needed for it to carry out its misdeeds. These can be a pain to remove, but doable. They do such things as hold machines hostage, display fake warnings, hide desktop icons, etc., and claim the machine is infected, etc. Since they are cross-platform being JavaScript and ASP, they can also infect Macintosh computers as well.

So yes, keep your antivirus product up-to-date. Patch when you can, if the updates are available. They won't be for Windows XP anymore, but update everything else if you can. Use common sense and don't download everything and anything. Keep you wits about you as they say just like you would if you were to walk into a bad neighborhood.

John

 

[johnwhelan]

I too run XP-64, as well as XP-32.

Even if T:ANE doesn't support XP-64, no biggie. I'll have an installation of Win7 Pro 64 as one partition on my offline gaming rig. I'll still rely on XP for most of my everyday stuff, probably for the next 5 years at least.

Well XP-64 probably explains why you've been safe all these years, I think it was HP used to reckon that their MPE operating system was safe form viruses on the grounds that no Malware writer knew anything about it.

Cheerio John

 

[NeonTheGriffon]

<post>

I personally do not use antivirus on my laptop. It's always secured on me, I sleep with it, and I just run malwarebytes scans every once in a while.
Nothing is ever detected, as long as you are careful what you do, you should be fine. Regardless, I'm an idiot. Don't be me, and instead buy antivirus.

 

[johnwhelan]

I've wondered the same too, having dealt with many, many office workers over the years. I truly wonder how they can even drive a car some days.

So yes, keep your antivirus product up-to-date. Patch when you can, if the updates are available. They won't be for Windows XP anymore, but update everything else if you can. Use common sense and don't download everything and anything. Keep you wits about you as they say just like you would if you were to walk into a bad neighborhood.

John

Unfortunately the most common vector these days is infected Web sites infecting through the browsers. The older IE versions that XP users typically use that have JAVA installed are probably the most vulnerable. You don't need to download anything to get infected, just visiting the page is enough. There have been a number of Trainz related web sites that have been infected or had a bit of HMTL added to the web page so its not just sites that would have been considered dodgy years ago.

Cheerio John

 

[Franklin_Prestage]

Now I am impressed we could never get the drivers to work in the labs for even fairly mainstream products. I think its market share was something like less than 1% of 32 bit XP.

Cheerio John

Aye, there's the rub, John. What I did when I found a product that refused to install the drivers into my 64-bit system was to add them to my Virtual PC (MS VPC) running a 32-bit version. With that running in the background, I could share the 'whatever-it-was' in the VM with my 64-bit system. That's how I was able to utilize my rather expensive laser printers (color & B/W).

Cheers,

Franklin

 

[johnwhelan]

I personally do not use antivirus on my laptop. It's always secured on me, I sleep with it, and I just run malwarebytes scans every once in a while.
Nothing is ever detected, as long as you are careful what you do, you should be fine. Regardless, I'm an idiot. Don't be me, and instead buy antivirus.

Why buy antivirus? MSE is free and fairly good. Install one antivirus product might be an idea though.

Cheerio John

 

[NeonTheGriffon]

Why buy antivirus? MSE is free and fairly good. Install one antivirus product might be an idea though.

Cheerio John

On my desktop and servers I've been running Malwarebytes Pro for a while now. Can't recommend it enough.
Too lazy and cheap to buy it for my laptop though

 

[RRSignal]

Well XP-64 probably explains why you've been safe all these years, I think it was HP used to reckon that their MPE operating system was safe form viruses on the grounds that no Malware writer knew anything about it.

Cheerio John

Lol, regular old 32-bit XP has been my workhorse over the years. Again, never had a problem. Some of my installations have the OS hardened a bit, but I still have never had problems, because malware that enters through OS holes is nearly non-existent unless it's already on your network. Keeping your high-level apps is key, along with being wary of anything that downloads or attempts to download - when in doubt, delete anything that doesn't look right or do the three-finger salute and terminate your browser.

 

[RRSignal]

Unfortunately the most common vector these days is infected Web sites infecting through the browsers. The older IE versions that XP users typically use that have JAVA installed are probably the most vulnerable. You don't need to download anything to get infected, just visiting the page is enough. There have been a number of Trainz related web sites that have been infected or had a bit of HMTL added to the web page so its not just sites that would have been considered dodgy years ago.

Cheerio John

XP installations since the original SP1 never contained JVM in the first place, so Java is not an issue unless it was installed after-the-fact (which can and does happen just as often on later versions of Windows, since it's a third-party, non-Microsoft product.)

That said, it has long been been an adage, to the point of canon, that Internet Explorer should never be used, and that to do so is asking for trouble. Apart from it's sordid security history, in the early 2000's, the majority of infections did not make use of a security flaw; they used a FEATURE deliberately designed into the product.*

*(I know IE isn't as bad as it used to be, but facts are facts and history is history.)