I have to run XP on a few of my computers. What the heck do I do now as far as safe running goes. Do you, or should you use paid software or is there a free set-up one can use?

Thanks Guys and Best Regards, Rick

Lot's of free protection to be had.
Malwarebytes
Adaware
Zonealarm

And these programs still support XP; it's just Microsoft that no longer supports it's own products.

With the discontinued support of XP and all the newer OSs to attack, the hackers won't be bothering with XP much any more.

If you feel you must upgrade then go all the way to Win 8.1. The built in protection is vastly superior to what it was with Win 7 and older OS products.
They only caveat would be if you have older apps that might not work with Win 7 or Win 8. Those would have to be upgraded as well. Microsoft has a software and hardware compaatibility list you can check.

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Archeo-peteriX
Lot's of free protection to be had.
Malwarebytes
Adaware
Zonealarm

And these programs still support XP; it's just Microsoft that no longer supports it's own products.

With the discontinued support of XP and all the newer OSs to attack, the hackers won't be bothering with XP much any more.

If you feel you must upgrade then go all the way to Win 8.1. The built in protection is vastly superior to what it was with Win 7 and older OS products.
They only caveat would be if you have older apps that might not work with Win 7 or Win 8. Those would have to be upgraded as well. Microsoft has a software and hardware compaatibility list you can check.

Thanks Peter, What do you think of this

Rick,
From what I've read, MS Esssentials works ok with Win 7 but is marginal with Win XP. Win 8 has it's own protection which works well but was useless on XP.

Any protection is better than nothing but remember that MS is no longer supporting XP so MSEssentials is free to evolve without concern for XP and previous OS offerings.

In my professional world, I fall under the auspices of HIPAA. It is all about securing patient information so we have all had to migrate to Win 7. It has caused unbelievable chaos as much of our digital equipment does not have drivers that are Win 7 compatible and the manufacturers are in no hurry to accomodate us so the choice is stay on XP and be in violation of HIPAA (big fines) or migrate and pray someone comes up with a driver. The prevailing word from IT professionals is that nothing in my world works on Win 8 or 8.1 as the big software houses for my industry haven't quite gotten around to it yet and with everything having to connect up and play nice with patient management software, it is quite daunting and not for the weak of heart.

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alanrw
In my professional world, I fall under the auspices of HIPAA. It is all about securing patient information so we have all had to migrate to Win 7. It has caused unbelievable chaos as much of our digital equipment does not have drivers that are Win 7 compatible

Where I work, we also have instruments that require XP computers. We're dealing with the situation by creating a secure, dedicated VLAN for those devices with carefully restricted access to the rest of the network. Of course, we don't have HIPAA to deal with.

__________
Dave
'91 325iX

Thanks Guys, I tried zone alarm on my house computer and it seems to work fine, this one in the shop is another story thou.

The downloads never seem to go right, it either loads and doesn't work or you're asked to let it take over before it will download. I also noticed this shop computer that tried to run zone alarm runs slow as can be. I cleared all the old installs and will try again.

If I wanted to buy a program for this (what the heck would it be) I feel I'd like to have the disc, so I could run it in everything. Is this a reasonal expectaion? I run four computers that are xp and one mac that I don't think is a consideration. But I'm open to feedback on the mac too.

Thanks, Rick

You might have to convet to Linix. I think the later versions have windows emulation that will run programs like it is windows.

Bob in Lake Havasu

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Bob in Everett
You might have to convet to Linix. I think the later versions have windows emulation that will run programs like it is windows.

My new computer life…

So my old version of Zone alarm was not working, I decided to wipe out the old one and load a new version. The removal went fine and I loaded the new one (didn’t even run it before the computer shut down), so now the computer loads up fine and stays for 2 minutes and goes right to the blue screen of death… then goes to a repair screen (light blue) and starts to check the disks. It runs the checks and then starts the fixing process, the screen runs for about 15 minutes and says stuff like truncating certain files that are corrupt and at the end of the process everything says all is fixed.

Well, then it all happens again. Windows (XP home edition) opens fine and then goes back to the usual process. I’ve run it a good ten times hoping it would finally take but no dice.

Next I tried opening it in safe mode. I’m trying to at least get all my stuff on a flash drive then I’ll load up new again. I bought this Acer aspire 5000 new and have all 5 cds that came with it.

Can I do any transferring in safe mode or is there a better line of attack?

Thanks, Rick

Safe mode may allow it to run well enough to get the files moved. If it boot at all it should work.
Sounds like what I had to deal with at one point and I wound up just giving up and buying a new computer with Windows 7. I was frustrated with it for a while but now I have learned how to make it do most of what I want and gotten used to it.

Bob in Lake Havasu



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/04/2014 09:08PM by Bob in Everett.

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rkj

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Bob in Everett
You might have to convet to Linix. I think the later versions have windows emulation that will run programs like it is windows.

My new computer life…

So my old version of Zone alarm was not working, I decided to wipe out the old one and load a new version. The removal went fine and I loaded the new one (didn’t even run it before the computer shut down), so now the computer loads up fine and stays for 2 minutes and goes right to the blue screen of death… then goes to a repair screen (light blue) and starts to check the disks. It runs the checks and then starts the fixing process, the screen runs for about 15 minutes and says stuff like truncating certain files that are corrupt and at the end of the process everything says all is fixed.

Well, then it all happens again. Windows (XP home edition) opens fine and then goes back to the usual process. I’ve run it a good ten times hoping it would finally take but no dice.

Next I tried opening it in safe mode. I’m trying to at least get all my stuff on a flash drive then I’ll load up new again. I bought this Acer aspire 5000 new and have all 5 cds that came with it.

Can I do any transferring in safe mode or is there a better line of attack?

Thanks, Rick

This sounds like some problem in the hard drive, and some system files qent bad or missing.
Can't you cancel and skip the repair?

If you can start the safe mode, should be good enough to save your files and then format and do a fresh setup. If you can do the update in safe mode, for the latest windows version, you may get away with it. If safe mode won't start, may try to boot from a CD.

There are also Linux CD with a bunch of useful tools, you may give that a try as well.

Good luck!

Thanks Bob and Jose. I started to fiddle with thigs in safe mode and as soon as I get some time to spend on it I'll try to at least put some files on a flash drive so it's not a complete loose anyway. Seems to run fine in safe mode

This seems all like a bad dream, this computer has run so well for all these years, never missed a beat...

Is there any way to get that dark blue screen of death to stay up longer so I can read it, it flashes for a few seconds and goes right into the lighter blue fix-it screen....

Thanks, Rick

Rick, you may have some bad memory. There are several memory tools out there ... [pcsupport.about.com]

Pick one and put it on a USB stick or floppy with your good computer then run it on the shop machine.
This is all free and could save you a lot of time.

I once had an HP(Has Problems; High Priced; Horse Poop) computer that had two banks of ram. One of the banks died; the controlled not the actual RAM chips. This caused the computer to run slow and would often freeze and/or blue screen of death, when some routine demanded more RAM than was available. I used one of the memory tools on the advice of a knowledgeable IT guy and the first thing it came up with was only half the RAM to check. Voila; new computer time

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Archeo-peteriX
Rick, you may have some bad memory. There are several memory tools out there ... [pcsupport.about.com]

Pick one and put it on a USB stick or floppy with your good computer then run it on the shop machine.
This is all free and could save you a lot of time.

I once had an HP(Has Problems; High Priced; Horse Poop) computer that had two banks of ram. One of the banks died; the controlled not the actual RAM chips. This caused the computer to run slow and would often freeze and/or blue screen of death, when some routine demanded more RAM than was available. I used one of the memory tools on the advice of a knowledgeable IT guy and the first thing it came up with was only half the RAM to check. Voila; new computer time

Interesting Peter.... Just to be clear we're not talking about the two new memory cards I just put in this computer, right?

Yes, we are. You need to check those out thoroughly to eliminate the possibility you got a bad one or it got damaged in handling(static discharge).
The memory check will also let you know if the computer has access to all the memory you have installed.

Out of curiosity; how recently did you install this new memory? Was it before or after you started having trouble?

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Archeo-peteriX
Yes, we are. You need to check those out thoroughly to eliminate the possibility you got a bad one or it got damaged in handling(static discharge).
The memory check will also let you know if the computer has access to all the memory you have installed.

Out of curiosity; how recently did you install this new memory? Was it before or after you started having trouble?

Way before, I'd say about 6 months ago. It is strange how all this trouble started. All came from nowhere really, out of the blue...