Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article

To: dayglored
Microsoft has discontinued support for XP, Internet Explorer on XP, and Microsoft Defender.

If you're a Microsoft XP User, stop using Internet Explorer and switch to Google Chrome, FireFox, Safari or something other than IE.

As this is an EXPLOIT and not a Virus/Malware, the critical point is that the exploit is tied to IE.

For those of you with System Restore turned on make sure you have a System Restore point set, and a good backup of XP including the OS and your data files.

Stopping usage of IE will provide some protection for now but ultimately, XP is going to be breached world-wide and those of you running it will regret not upgrading.

19 posted on 04/27/2014 4:54:17 PM PDT by usconservative (When The Ballot Box No Longer Counts, The Ammunition Box Does. (What's In Your Ammo Box?))
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 10 | View Replies ]


To: usconservative
Stopping usage of IE will provide some protection for now but ultimately, XP is going to be breached world-wide and those of you running it will regret not upgrading.

There is no upgrade path from XP. Those boxes were built to run with as little as 512 MB of RAM, if not even less. They have slow processors that won't run Win7 or later. I know because I dealt with this before, and I have a few of those boxes now. The only upgrade path that they have, in theory, is Linux; but in practice they have only the path into dumpster because it costs you too much to upgrade them and to use them, compared to buying a new system.

The real problem is with XP that operates equipment. Here is an example:

This particular, now obsolete, oscilloscope was sold for about $25K then, and it still is a perfectly good instrument today. It is selling right now from $5K to $10K. But it is controlled by WinXP. If you have ten of those oscilloscopes in your business, would you be in any hurry to scrap a quarter million dollars in working hardware just because of a very remote threat? Those scopes have never seen a Windows Update in their life, by the way - you cannot risk that on a soft real time equipment. If you have to protect them, you do that with firewalls; but most scopes are not even connected to the network. Maybe GPIB; but Ethernet at that time was not very useful.

This is not the highest price for a unit of equipment either. Take this signal source analyzer, for example - its price can be above $60K:

There are CNC machining centers and robots, however, that cost far more than that. The fact is that XP/XPe was a de-facto standard for all such equipment for ten years. All high-end, smart equipment made in the last decade runs XP. There is no way to upgrade it. Discarding it would cause terrible financial losses, and it would be also not very wise because the hardware still works fine. So XP will soldier on.

33 posted on 04/27/2014 5:25:59 PM PDT by Greysard
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 19 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson