All You Win XP Stragglers

[burlmart]

Well, there are still about 30% of ALL PCs on the planet still running XP despite constant warnings from MS to dump it by this April 8, after which there will no longer be OS patches or other update support.


Two days back, all the reporters said that MS would also quit providing free antivirus protection for XP thru its Microsoft Security Essentials software. Today, we read they will provide it until July, 2015.

Just wondering how many fellow XP hanger-oners like me w/ plan to keep using XP? What special extra things will you be doing after April 8. I will run a complete Malwarebytes scan every week, or so.

I tried several free AV programs like AVG, Avast, and Comodo, but just find them too intrusive compared to MSE.

[burlmart]

For $25, Malwarebytes offers XP lifetime security protection on 3 devices.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2110009/a-thin-lifeline-for-xp-users-new-malwarebytes-suite-will-supp...

[burlmart]

Funny thing, google this "what is the purpose of administrator password in win xp" and no reasons show up. Yet all the security sites say it is SO important.

???

[burlmart]

THX, Strollin

These last several posts made me look into some things I always avoided. So I learned to create a password for the administrator acct, and even how to bypass typing it in using START and RUN 'CONTROL USERPASSWORDS2'

Why isn't the password of the administrator account enough to be satisfied with, because it seems to me that a limited user acct would make us schizoid?

[Wayne_Dohnal]

I run in admin mode less than 1% of the time, and don't do any web browsing or email from admin mode. I don't apply any updates unless it's to fix something that's broken for my use, so no more xp updates is a non-issue in my mind.

[strollin]

Admin account has full control to add/remove hardware, software and users.

Standard account has control over their account only, They have a separate space on the drive with a profile that allows them to customize their settings (like desktop and themes). They can run (but not install/uninstall software) and can create, save, delete their own data files.

A Guest account is for temporary use of the computer. No private workspace and can't make changes.

[burlmart]

The following question shows how it has taken me many years to learn what I know of XP, and why I do not really want to give it up now (maybe for W9).

I have never used User Accounts in Control Panel - I am called 'Owner' as a Windows default name for administrator. I read in User Accounts intformation guides that there are administrator and limited accounts, and they list that the limited type can only change their picture and password. I assume the Guest account (mine is off) would be a limited type account.

Just what else can I do as a guest? I do not follow how I could run the computer on a non-administrator type account.

Can anyone briefly clue me in?

[drsteve]

Even a familiar and trusted site can be an unwitting source of virii and malware--infected ads are one of the primary vectors these days, and many ads come from remote servers that the website you're viewing may have little or no control over. If your AV software is a resource hog, then get a different one. 1492 is right: going unprotected, especially with a Windows machine, is a really bad idea. Antivirus software is like a motorcycle helmet: you don't need it until you do.

[1492]

burlmart wrote:


Is (Admin-Nonadmin) applicable to XP Pro only?

How often do you need to come back as Admin for ordinary stuff, like Disk Cleanup?

For the vast majority of users, you don't. But that's the problem with Windows users. Most just operate under a standard Admin user account with elevated privileges when it's really not necessary. And makes it that much more easy for malware to install without one's knowledge.

[1492]

And by that time, damage could have already been done. Especially if you picked up a keylogging trojan hidden in a rootkit. Which by its nature, wouldn't be noticeable or even readily detectable after the fact.

I would never recommend this route unless you are using some type of sandboxing environment. Or at very minimum, include some type of keyboard encryption.

[burlmart]

Wayne Dohnal wrote:

I gave up on virus checkers running all the time, using half the processor speed and never finding any viruses. I do run a firewall, use mostly sites I know, and scan with Malwarebytes every month or if anything seems odd. I have very complete backups including the old computers still in full working order. And I have a spare computer or two in case any parts fail. No worries.

Wow, now there's 2 of us doing the same thing. After getting a few viruses while running the anti-virus software, I figured all it was doing was causing a lot of problems and not helping. What I've found helps the most is not running in administrator mode. Since I switched to non-admin mode and dumped the anti-virus software, zero viruses. I have a win7 machine, and an XP machine, and consider win7 to be a downgrade. The win7 UI is worse, and for me it's not any faster.

A whole thread on this...I could ask questions forever -- I am clueless on this. I will only ask 2:

Is (Admin-Nonadmin) applicable to XP Pro only?

How often do you need to come back as Admin for ordinary stuff, like Disk Cleanup?

[Wayne_Dohnal]

I gave up on virus checkers running all the time, using half the processor speed and never finding any viruses. I do run a firewall, use mostly sites I know, and scan with Malwarebytes every month or if anything seems odd. I have very complete backups including the old computers still in full working order. And I have a spare computer or two in case any parts fail. No worries.

Wow, now there's 2 of us doing the same thing. After getting a few viruses while running the anti-virus software, I figured all it was doing was causing a lot of problems and not helping. What I've found helps the most is not running in administrator mode. Since I switched to non-admin mode and dumped the anti-virus software, zero viruses. I have a win7 machine, and an XP machine, and consider win7 to be a downgrade. The win7 UI is worse, and for me it's not any faster.

[Harvey51]

Interesting! Funny, once you get older and fall behind a bit, you get very comfortable with it - and costs drop dramatically. I happened to find 30 Dell dual core 4 GHz 4 GB desktops at the local dump, thrown out by a school because they got 5 years old. They were sold with Vista and probably ran slow. I have just outfitted three of them with new hard drives and installed XP Pro to replace the ten year old desktops in our house. They are quite peppy! They compile a 43 000 line Delphi program in 1.5 seconds, twice as fast as my old machine. That's $60 to probably get five years of use. I wonder what I will find in the dump in 5 years?

I gave up on virus checkers running all the time, using half the processor speed and never finding any viruses. I do run a firewall, use mostly sites I know, and scan with Malwarebytes every month or if anything seems odd. I have very complete backups including the old computers still in full working order. And I have a spare computer or two in case any parts fail. No worries.

[burlmart]

Note: I am sticking w/ an OS I have learned to control over the past few years - XP. Plus, my demands on an OS are minimal now. I have written umpteen programs back in the day, and used so many products including Office for so many purposes over my academic and engineering career, and now only need a few lite weight things. The low vision controls of XP and FF browser (plus nice ad/track block extensions) do it well. My 10 y/o single core AMD in an HP box is ready to browse in 50 sec from a restart, and 20 sec from hibernate. If it had quieter fans, I'd just leave it on.

******************************

All that said, the posts here on this thread and elsewhere on the www about how to 'upgrade' to W7 or W8 do not address my interests, or those of many like me, who have just what we need in XP.

But they do raise an interesting point about pricing, and I will only look at a single scenario - that of a software upgrade to W7.

The thing you are paying for is the manufacturer's support (MS) for an OS for a specified calendar time epoch - 2009 to 2020 for W7, I think. So if you 'upgrade' XP to W7 today, you only get about 1/2 of the support built-in to the original price for a copy of W7.

Whatever happened to prorated value?

[strollin]

1775 wrote:
... I have a pc, a laptop, and a netbook that all work well with XP but don't have the capacity to upgrade. I am not going to throw away those functioning computers because MS decided to write memory and drive hog OS replacements.

I have a 5 year old netbook with 1.5G of RAM that originally came with XP. I upgraded it to Win 8.1 and it runs better now than it ever did with XP.