Why do you still use Windows XP?

Harry Vaderchi wrote:
On Wed, 22 Feb 2012 22:41:45 -0000, Bill in Co
wrote:

J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:

[re winfile]

http://www.brydon.net/winfile/

Ah, sorry.

No, my fault for not being clear.

Even if you find it, be careful, as it is NOT long filename aware, and
can
(will) destroy those longfilenames, since it is NOT longfilename aware
(IF you use it to "work on" the files ("work on" meaning more than just
displaying them). But I have to admit in some ways, File Manager seemed
better (had some additional features over Windows Explorer).

Did you look at the link I posted? It claims to be updated version that
*is* LFN aware.

--
[dash dash space newline 4line sig]

Albi CNU

No, didn't look, and I was thinking of the original version - sorry.
But last night I did come across the NT version from the MDGx web page
http://www.mdgx.com/ which seems to work fine with XP, which is related to
the one you mention above.

In ,
Lostgallifreyan wrote:
"BillW50" wrote in :

Oh really? I loaded lots of crap at boot with Windows 98. And what is
the deal with no AV? As I totally believe for total protection all
you need is a stealth firewall (a router works too) and a real time
AV scanner.

I agree about the firewall, but no AV here. Instead, I use the
firewall to catch anything trying to get online. The only other thing
a virus might profit from is nuking its host, so I watch the boot
sector and keep backups of it (and entire OS partition images).

AV sounds useful, but there are many false positives, especially when
'heuristics' are used. Looking for specific signatures is a bit like
a doctor taking a blood sample, finding sickle cell anemia,
'deducing' that the pateint is likely black and therefore a thief!
Harsh, but the analogy is fair in principle if not in degree (and
plenty of innocent program writers will agree, as all it takes is ONE
major false positive published as if it were
a certainty, to seriously harm their reputations). At least with a
good anti- trojan, we catch the thief by his actions.

I have used lots of AV over the past 15 years or so. And I only use
Avast today because it is very good about not flagging false positives.
IDK, maybe flagging like one per two years or so. Which is near perfect
in my book.

Almost never do I pick up a virus or a trojan. But once in a blue moon I
do. Last time was on February 7th of this year. I pick them up so rare,
that it was a bit of a shock. And this one was a trojan and it had a
plan to infect the system on reboot. And I reboot like once every two
weeks or so (so I don't know where I picked it up at). And when I
rebooted on the 7th, Avast loads first and when the trojan tried to
install, Avast caught it and nuked it.

I dunno about people running without an AV. As I have been running
Windows since '93 and I have never been infected yet (and I have over a
dozen computers here). Although at least twice during this time, I would
have been infected without an AV.

--
Bill
Gateway M465e ('06 era) - OE-QuoteFix v1.19.2
Centrino Core Duo T2400 1.83GHz - 2GB - Windows XP SP3

In ,
98 Guy wrote:
BillW50 wrote:
People say using IE6 is bad at rendering nowadays.

It is. IE6 has been a horror show for the past 4 or 5 years.

Heck that is nothing compared to how bad pages look
under FF2.

You need to do more homework. IE6 is universally recognized as a
highly non-compliant browser. Macro$haft designed it that way on
purpose - to twist web-conventions to suit their own needs and plans
at the time.

I have no problem with non-compliant browsers. As I believe in freedom.
And compliances are for dictators and commies. And I am all for people
trying to find better ways to do something. Sometimes they work and
sometimes they don't.

And I still have machines with both FF2 and IE6 on them. And I can tell
you that IE6 still today renders webpages far better than FF2 does.

--
Bill
Gateway M465e ('06 era) - OE-QuoteFix v1.19.2
Centrino Core Duo T2400 1.83GHz - 2GB - Windows XP SP3

On 3/13/2012 3:48 AM (Los Angeles/L.A.'s time zone), BillW50 typed:

People say using IE6 is bad at rendering nowadays.

It is. IE6 has been a horror show for the past 4 or 5 years.

And outdated.
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In m,
Ant wrote:
On 3/13/2012 3:48 AM (Los Angeles/L.A.'s time zone), BillW50 typed:

People say using IE6 is bad at rendering nowadays.

It is. IE6 has been a horror show for the past 4 or 5 years.

And outdated.

So? Some claim old people are outdated too. And who was that democratic
politician again who said something like people over 60 have outlived
their usefulness to society and should get out of the way and die?

--
Bill
Gateway M465e ('06 era) - OE-QuoteFix v1.19.2
Centrino Core Duo T2400 1.83GHz - 2GB - Windows XP SP3

"BillW50" wrote in :

So? Some claim old people are outdated too. And who was that democratic
politician again who said something like people over 60 have outlived
their usefulness to society and should get out of the way and die?



He was an idiot. All there is to know. People should be free to make their
own mistakes, but being free to make the worst mistakes of the past is a
liberty they should not be easily granted. If young people actually DO learn
from the past, and manage to avoid a third world war caused by repeating
dangerous and stupid mistakes from the past, they might value the old for the
protection, which extends well beyond childhood care. As for the rebels, I
know from my OWN rebellions that there is nothing in rebellion if you act
like there is nothing to rebel against. (Even law breakers have to know and
respect the law, to beeak it in any meaningful way). There is no problem
disagreeing with the past, but the fastest way to outlive usefulness is to
act like none of it matters. It is also the best way to get REALLY scared of
growing old!

About that AV thing, I guess I got used to Ghost, and changing the OS for a
previous clean copy at need. I used to use and like AV (early Kaspersky), but
I found preparing clean sources for recovery easier than keeping virus
signatures up to date. That's because once I have local sources, in clean
backups, I don't have to think about them regularly.

Per BillW50:
So? Some claim old people are outdated too. And who was that democratic
politician again who said something like people over 60 have outlived
their usefulness to society and should get out of the way and die?

Wasn't that part of the back story in Stanley Kubrick's
"Clockwork Orange" movie?
--
Pete Cresswell

In ,
Lostgallifreyan wrote:
"BillW50" wrote in :

So? Some claim old people are outdated too. And who was that
democratic politician again who said something like people over 60
have outlived their usefulness to society and should get out of the
way and die?

He was an idiot. All there is to know. People should be free to make
their own mistakes, but being free to make the worst mistakes of the
past is a liberty they should not be easily granted. If young people
actually DO learn from the past, and manage to avoid a third world
war caused by repeating dangerous and stupid mistakes from the past,
they might value the old for the protection, which extends well
beyond childhood care. As for the rebels, I know from my OWN
rebellions that there is nothing in rebellion if you act like there
is nothing to rebel against. (Even law breakers have to know and
respect the law, to beeak it in any meaningful way). There is no
problem disagreeing with the past, but the fastest way to outlive
usefulness is to act like none of it matters. It is also the best way
to get REALLY scared of growing old!

Yes indeed.

About that AV thing, I guess I got used to Ghost, and changing the OS
for a previous clean copy at need. I used to use and like AV (early
Kaspersky), but I found preparing clean sources for recovery easier
than keeping virus signatures up to date. That's because once I have
local sources, in clean backups, I don't have to think about them
regularly.

Well... I dunno. I do both. Restoring from clean backups takes time for
one. And some malware doesn't give you any signs that your computer is
even infected. So without an AV, you wouldn't really know if you were
infected or not.

One idea I really like is Windows Embedded. There are other software
that does something similar. But what basically happens is that all
writes are redirected to somewhere else (like to RAM or to another
drive). So nothing on your boot/system drive is changed at all. Windows
thinks it is writing there and things are written and re-read with the
updated information, although...

When you power off (you don't even have to do a proper shutdown either).
And when you boot up later, none of the changes stuck and you are back
to day 1 all over again. So any updates, malware, or whatever are
totally gone. To me, if you are not going to run an AV, this is the real
way to go.

I don't know of anything like this for Windows 9x though. As Windows
Embedded I think is XP only version. Windows SteadyState works only with
XP and Vista (and slows your computer down I heard), but also restores
your computer back to day 1.

And keeping virus signatures up-to-date is very easy nowadays. As they
happen all in the background and all you need to do is to turn the
computer on and the rest is taken care of.

--
Bill
Gateway M465e ('06 era) - OE-QuoteFix v1.19.2
Centrino Core Duo T2400 1.83GHz - 2GB - Windows XP SP3

In ,
(PeteCresswell) wrote:
Per BillW50:
So? Some claim old people are outdated too. And who was that
democratic politician again who said something like people over 60
have outlived their usefulness to society and should get out of the
way and die?

Wasn't that part of the back story in Stanley Kubrick's
"Clockwork Orange" movie?

Could have been, I haven't seen that one in ages. But this guy was on
national TV saying this stuff just about 4 years ago. It doesn't
surprise me that a few would feel this way. But what does surprise me is
actually saying something like this publicly. I seem to recall it was
either during those National Healthcare discussions or during the 2008
campaign.

--
Bill
Gateway M465e ('06 era) - OE-QuoteFix v1.19.2
Centrino Core Duo T2400 1.83GHz - 2GB - Windows XP SP3

"BillW50" wrote in :

One idea I really like is Windows Embedded. There are other software
that does something similar. But what basically happens is that all
writes are redirected to somewhere else (like to RAM or to another
drive). So nothing on your boot/system drive is changed at all. Windows
thinks it is writing there and things are written and re-read with the
updated information, although...


I like that idea. In many ways my methods aim in that general direction.
Prgrams on their own partition, Ghost images, etc. RAM disk in large memory,
with W98 swap file on it. To many that just sounds insane, but it removes two
problems, disk thrashing with associated poor performance, and OS tweaks
aimed at getting round this in ways that the OS isn't fully designed to
handle. This way it thinks everything is normal, optimsed as it expects, and
it still gets as much RAM as it ever needs. And it's easy to do.

When you power off (you don't even have to do a proper shutdown either).
And when you boot up later, none of the changes stuck and you are back
to day 1 all over again. So any updates, malware, or whatever are
totally gone. To me, if you are not going to run an AV, this is the real
way to go.


Indeed. I have a registry lock that works that way. I set it up so I have to
hold ESC at the right moment at boot if I want anything to stick there beyond
the previous session. Doesn't take care of files, but Ghost does. I used a
small PDA that has its OS in firmware, that works pretty much like you
described. I think WIndows Mobile and the embedded thing have the same root
and methods. I never pushed my methods to fill firmware base, mainly because
I'm running on hard disks, RAM, and there was no reason to push that far. I
have been working (last year anyway) on X98, a very tiny W98 with the
smallest registry on record, possibly. That could be firmware based. I think
Lite PC did some work on that too, I heard they'd got some very small W98
systems on some embedded devices. Main reason I worked on mine was I knew I
couldn't afford theirs!

I don't know of anything like this for Windows 9x though. As Windows
Embedded I think is XP only version. Windows SteadyState works only with
XP and Vista (and slows your computer down I heard), but also restores
your computer back to day 1.


Ah. As above... Those examples, mine, and the small private builds based
on 98-Lite, are the only ones I know of, bar a few 'rescue disk' type
installs a few people have done. X98 Core is a Ghost file 5.87 MB big, it
restores and boots so fast that even on a desktop machine with hard disks it
boots like DOS 6! Not quite as instant as pushing the button on a Dell X50V,
but even so, it is comparable to the time those need to do a hard reset.
Faster actually..

And keeping virus signatures up-to-date is very easy nowadays. As they
happen all in the background and all you need to do is to turn the
computer on and the rest is taken care of.


That's maybe why I didn't like it. I guess I'm not that trusting. I mean,
open the door that readily, at the wrong time, and things might be very bad.
I have no specific mechanism in mind, I just know that my judgement isn't
always good. So I figure that if I have to make moves that maintain my
judgement, I might as well do them based on my own methods. If I make a habit
of those, they might better see me through on habit alone. Same logic used to
train people so they do the right thing even when they can barely think.