sliderider wrote:

For suspicious email attachments, I deploy private proprietary bioware (me!) to analyze before opening.

The best defense. :)

"Smart move" or not, the overwhelming majority of all these worrisome XP EOL scenarios is baseless FUD.

I was stuck with Windows 98 SE for my primary system long past the end of Microsoft's support for it. I can tell you right now, security is actually the LEAST concern when Microsoft ends support for an OS.

The biggest concern is both driver support and software support.

The first problem I ran into following the end of Windows 98 SE's life-cycle is that newer games stopped working altogether, despite my system meeting the requirements, even if just barely. Once I found out about KernelEx I was able to circumvent SOME of these limitations... but that was just the minor issue.

The second problem I ran into was a little more insidious: Things like web browsers, plugins for browsers, firewall software and virus scanners, all of them eventually reached points where the producers called it quits and gave up on Windows 98 support because the developers could no longer get help from Microsoft when they ran into issues, and because they were essentially spending time coding for a platform only a tiny fraction of users were still using, so it didn't make sense from a business perspective. For browsers and for firewall software, you could just stick with the older stuff and be OK... but virus scanners would refuse to update their virus definitions and browser plugins not only started to malfunction with stuff made for later versions of those plugins, some of them were outright crashing the entire system when newer files tried to run inside those plugins, forcing a restart, even when using browsers that were still being kept up to date. (Opera was one of the last browsers to end Win98 support.) Every time I watched a video online there was a 20% chance I'd trigger an instant reboot of the computer. :P

The third problem took awhile to run into and that was driver updates. In order to run newer stuff, your drivers need to be in good shape, otherwise you run into all sorts of tiny problems which degrade the quality of the software you're trying to run, such as by causing blurry/missing textures in games or sound drop-outs in anything audio-related, or in worst case scenarios, programs simply just don't do what they're supposed to.

It took about three years following the end of Win98 support for it to get really bad, though problems started cropping up as early as one year following. Fortunately, I got my WinXP system from my father in either late 2009 (or early 2010, forget exactly when) and I barely touched my Win98 system following.

TL;DR: Appel isn't crazy, just misguided. For a closed network with no internet access and no software updates, he'd be fine. However, after a year or so, accessing the internet and attempting to run newer programs WILL screw him over if he plans to do those things. :P

VileRancour wrote:

"Smart move" or not, the overwhelming majority of all these worrisome XP EOL scenarios is baseless FUD.

Agreed. That isn't to say newer OS' are bad, but they aren't immune to PEBKAC and it isn't like there aren't viruses for 7, 8, etc. 😵

Agreed with Gemini000 as well - for a non-Internet network it really doesn't matter what you run, but if you want to stay online, you have to maintain some minimum order of compatibility. 😒

How does he know he isnt infected? Its common knowledge in security circles that there are far to many viruses extant and newly released each day for signature based virus scanners to be effective.

Odds are he's infected and doesnt know it.

I was about to post the same thing.

And here's an example:
http://arstechnica.com/security/2014/04/how-a … of-ddos-zombies

I didn't see NotScript in his list.....

I'd lke to see a web browser that completely focuses on security by default and then allows you to work backwards instead of the other way around.

I know some people are amazed/shocked that some people still use Windows XP. Hell, I still know people that run Windows 98SE as their main OS because they have no need to update their aging hardware, etc. So, i'm not shocked at all that people still want to use Windows XP. In my personal opinion Windows 2000 & Windows XP were the best versions of Windows that Microsoft has ever released.

YouTube user, PuppyLinuxWorld, posted a Windows XP playlist he labled as Project Windows XP which is kind of a "Living with XP" series he's intentionally put together for XP users that intend to use Windows XP after the support officially stops on April 8th. While i'm a Linux only user, i've not really used Windows since 2006, it's refreshing to see someone from the Linux community share ideas and helpful hints to support those that still want to run Windows XP even after it's EOL.

Playlist: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL1BspvQ … v7mFDFr_vSnGuy9

As he hints towards, the most common mistake XP users make is they exclusively use Windows XP under the Administrator user rather than as a regular user, just as on unix/linux based OS's it's NEVER good to run an OS exclusively with Administrator rights. He of course gives helpful ideas and pointers as well.

He's also earlier in the year posted this video as well. 😎

Long Live The XP.

As Duke Nukem used to say : "Hail to the king, baby!"

No. Switch to Linux for anything that matters. XP is nothing more than a game launcher at this point. I mean, just look at the amount of work it takes to keep XP safe. Ain't nobody got time for that.

Even better - don't put it on the internet. No security problem there,.

I dual boot Linux and XP. XP can be disconnected from the internet by disabling the network in Windows. Linux can be used to go online. Or Linux can be installed on a USB stick and use that to go online.

Not everyone will be comfortable with Linux though, especially those small businesses.

Even for me, when I'm using Linux, I keep thinking to myself 'why can't (something) be as simple as using windows?'. Sometimes there's too much to do when compared with windows for the same task.

But it should be straight enough for most users if all they want to do is to surf the net or write a document, without the need to worry about driver installation for individual components, except maybe printers and their multifunction software?

But it pays to get familiar with Linux as an alternative operating system. It's free afterall.

Computers are so cheap nowadays that there is no reason to make life difficult trying to keep no longer supported OS' going for discontinued daily computing. YMO.

PhaytalError wrote:

As he hints towards, the most common mistake XP users make is they exclusively use Windows XP under the Administrator user rather than as a regular user, just as on unix/linux based OS's it's NEVER good to run an OS exclusively with Administrator rights.

Running XP without Admin/Super-User (they're separate user groups) privs is not the same as running Ubuntu or Windows Vista-later without Admin/Super-User privs; the amount of applications that will simply refuse to start, refuse to install, not install correctly, not run correctly, etc until you switch back and let it execute as an Administrator is alarming (and doing this constantly per-application gets tedious). You have to remember that a lot of applications from the Windows 9x-XP era are designed on the assumption that everything has admin rights all the time. Especially games. I'm not trying to diminish the suggestion - just to point out that it isn't as straight-forwards as UAC on Windows or sudo on Ubuntu.

In general I'd say XP's day came and went a few years ago, and that for a modern computer that will be used for general browsing of the Internet, viewing multimedia objects, etc one should probably be using either a newer version of Windows, or Linux, or something else (OS X anyone?). Not just from a security standpoint, but also in terms of forwards support for hardware and software features. Keeping older machines around to support older tasks is perfectly fine too - but that's a distinction that I think needs to be made. There's nothing wrong with WindowsXP joining Windows 95, MS-DOS, and the Apple II in retroland imho.

I'm a diehard XP user, and honestly, I don't really care that Micro$oft has given up support on XP. Some people would say I'm foolish, but the key to staying safe while running an unsupported operating system is simply to use your brain. Don't open email attachments, don't click on sketchy-looking links, disable browser ads wherever possible, run an up-to-date antivirus, run a hardware firewall, use ludicrously complicated passwords, and most importantly, BE PARANOID. 🤣 It works for me. 😁

Or you can run XP mode in Windows 8 if you insist on using it.

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/forget-end-life- … dows-8-xp-mode/

mr_bigmouth_502 wrote:

run an up-to-date antivirus

Until the AV developers drop support for XP. It is time let go of it except when trying to keep an ancient machine going, but not much reason for that other than for an old gaming machine.

iam still thinking of using xp.. But i do only for steam games for the online part.. Then just installing the games one for one.. And then put everything back offline..

Robin4 wrote:

iam still thinking of using xp.. But i do only for steam games for the online part.. Then just installing the games one for one.. And then put everything back offline..

I thought for sure Steam stopped working on Windows XP quite sometime ago?

That's Windows 2000. XP works fine for now. (IIRC, Steam works on 2K via blackwingcat or WildBill API wrappers)

According to the survey XP still accounts for 6% http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/
I want to say they dropped support for 9x and 2000 when they were 1% or below.

They probably wouldn't want to piss off roughly 4,500,000 (potential) people .

Even when they drop support the games will still work fine as long as they are cracked as they currently do with Windows 2000.

DosFreak wrote:

Even when they drop support the games will still work fine as long as they are cracked as they currently do with Windows 2000.

And this brings up an issue. What if your operating is no longer supported by Steam? You paid for the right to play those games, can Steam just cut you off like that without violating your legal rights? Aren't they obligated to continue supporting whatever OS your games were designed to run on?