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Cheeky git lol ,dinosaur i aint quite ,but i did have to decommision my old Xp notebook for the reasons you gave,mainly because the notebooks capacity was so small i couldn't even do an upgrade to windows 7 lol.
Just as well i have a new windows 8 laptop .
I only hope it serves me as well as the notebook i have just shut down for good.
Thanks Errol ,for warning anyone still using the xp system ,hopefully most will be on a laptop with enough space on the hard drive to upgrade to windows 7 or 8.,i wasn't as lucky .Fred. :-)
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I've still got XP...... tried ages ago to update it, but it didn't work.
I used to use the Microsoft Security, but had to get rid of that last month.
Using Firefox & McAfee.
Any advice (in plain English) will be most welcome.
:-)
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It may be worth saying that in the case of most of the reported "security flaws" they depend on local admin access to your computer and will not work from the internet using most modern browsers. For that reason the usual vector of attack is e-mail attachments. Therefore allow yr AV program to deal with all e-mail.
The major exception of course is IE. Back in the year zero of the internet Microsoft decided that they wanted IE and the windows OS totally integrated shutting out the competition. This of course created a big row and Microsoft had to pay > $ 1bn in fines. Although the lock out went (more or less) the fatal design flaws in IE/ANY Windows OS install remain. That is to say it has always been a poor idea to run IE. Ask the Iranians... If you really must have high level security don't run Windows at all.
As Errol says people should not run their accounts in the admin role by default. That applies to any version of Windows not just XP. It also applies to Linux.
As regards ongoing use of XP the latest lab created theoretical IE flaw is irrelevant. That is because XP has been unable to run the latest version of IE for years. Anybody still choosing to run IE on XP is extremely ill advised to do so. Any of Chrome, Firefox, Opera will do just fine. All are free.
There are several excellent antivirus / firewall alternatives for XP of which the best by far is AVAST. With AVAST the extras are worth shelling out for. If you don't mind shelling out the latest version of NAV is ok having overcome its bloatware problems. Yes, it supports XP.
It is also worth making sure yr router is correctly set up. Some are susceptible to the bleeding heart SSL bug. Many have the auto connect feature on, and have all kinds of poor security setup as a consequence of keeping things ez....
A popular reason for running XP is that some hardware / programs won't run in Windows 7 and 8. With Windows 7 the fix is easy - run XP in a "virtual machine" . If you google for this there are lots of step by step guides. It is a little bit more of a hassle with Windows 8 but this works:
http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/how-to/windows/3411230/how-migrate-windows-xp-mode-windows-8/
Despite the hoop la against XP it is perfectly viable to go on running the OS. BTW if you install it on a modern machine under a VM and give it 3 GB of RAM it really flies!
enjoy :-)
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This could be very important for those who are still hanging on to XP by their fingernails.
Microsoft has announced a flaw in Internet Explorer (IE) which can give hackers access to affected/infected computers.
It applies to all version of IE from 6 right up to the current version (11).
Now, although this affects all IE users, it is particularly important for XP dinosaurs, oops systems.
Why?
Because they will not be covered when Microsoft release a patch for the problem as support for XP has ceased and there will therefore be no more official security updates for it.
Computers/systems affected by this latest flaw could give the hacker total control over the computer because it could give them the same rights as the user thus allowing them to view data, change settings, install software, delete files etc etc
XP systems will not be protected but there is a simple (if somewhat rudimentary) work around.
It will not stop/patch the vulnerability but it will put up a "barrier" so that computers cannot be "taken over".
If you are an XP user (although this is good practice for all users anyway) make sure you are not logged on with administrator's rights.
It may be that your usual login (computer user name) has full administrator's rights, in which case, create a new profile without administrative user rights and use that to log in.
If this sounds like gobbledygook or you need a hand doing the above just give me a shout.
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