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posted by
LaminatorX
on Wednesday March 05 2014, @07:30AM
from the unplugging-the-network-cable dept.
from the unplugging-the-network-cable dept.
Appalbarry writes:
"Microsoft is about to abandon Windows XP to the wolves. Fair enough it's ancient. However, there are still going to be a lot of XP boxes out there, and a fair number of them are unlikely to ever get upgraded until the hardware dies.
My question is: what's available to help make this old OS stay reasonably secure and safe for the people who can't or won't abandon it?
Over the years I've been through Central Point Antivirus, Norton, McAfee, AVG, stuff like Zone Alarm, and of course the various Microsoft anti-malware offerings. But since moving over to Linux I really haven't kept up on the wild and wonderful world of Windows security tools.
Suggestions?"
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(Score: 3, Interesting) by TheloniousToady on Wednesday March 05 2014, @01:46PM
In my case, the ongoing need I have for a couple of XP machines revolve around hardware and drivers, so the virtual machine idea doesn't apply. (I use some old specialized hardware whose drivers were never ported to the Vista+ driver model.) So, it looks to me like the only defense I have is to leave the machines off or disconnected from the network as much as possible. Along with the usual precautions of having a firewall, anti-virus software, and being selective in where I surf (probably not at all on those machines) and what I install (little, if anything), I don't think I'll run into any problems. Then again, maybe I'm being over-optimistic. We'll see.
(Score: 2, Informative) by TK on Thursday March 06 2014, @04:44PM
I have a similar situation with computers running Windows 2000 (and soon the XP ones too), I've taken the first step by taking them off the network, but just in case they catch something from a filthy flash drive (or floppy, in some cases), I've backed the drives up in a raw format with DriveImage XML.
http://www.runtime.org/driveimage-xml.htm [runtime.org]
The fleas have smaller fleas, upon their backs to bite them, and those fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum