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Solve : Microsoft patches IE bug in Windows XP? |
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Answer» Here is the link: WOW ... talk about some serious XP HATE on the hands of this writer. Bashing Microsoft for giving 1 last serious patch for XP was not a bad thing, and was not a push over move. Microsoft by doing what they did was a smart move I feel because it was the responsible thing to do. While its not expected of Microsoft to offer any more security updates for XP, if they have any others that they wish to offer, I'll willingly accept them and not bash them for it like this writer.It wasn't technically an XP patch anyway; it patches Internet Explorer. It being made available with XP's Update feature was because the patch to mshtml.dll would be the same regardless of OS. But further still, Patching XP won't provide anything. By patching an OS that they've already claimed as End Of Support, they are extending that End of Support. And the fact is that there is HUGE backlash in the enterprise and companies from IT professionals who have been turned into liars with Microsoft's patch. Bosses being told "we need to upgrade from XP, it's out of support, it will not receive more patches" have been turned into Liars by Microsoft backpedalling on their own Product Lifecycle guidelines; and now those Bosses insist on staying on XP. There are a lot of stories about this via article/blog comments as well as on reddit. And this out of cycle patch has caused the stubborn boss-types who were about the relent and go "oh, I guess it is out of support" to instead double-down on their original bet that Microsoft will keep patching XP even if they claim otherwise. Quote Obviously this writer wanted to draw attention to themselves and what better way to do that than make an ... ( 3 letter word ) of themselves with this article. This article was clearly desperation on the writer to be noticed. Unfortunately articles like this draw attention which is what the writer wants. Reading it, I can find no inaccuracies or poorly reasoned considerations. Microsoft has extended support and now, after dropping support entirely, issued an out-of-band patch for a OS that has bee nend-of-lifed. They have never done this before for any other previous Operating System. Quote there is no need to turn the lights out on XP for low risk online use, and especially offline use.Thing is, this applies equally to any Operating System that has been end-of-lifed, from Windows 3.1 through to XP. This patch does nothing to make XP more feasible for that purpose anyway. If anything, the best way to make XP safer is to no longer make it a target. If you run Windows 98SE it's almost impossible to get infected because new malware/drive-bys, exploits, etc. expect at least Windows XP or at least an NT Core. As XP's usage drops, so too will it being as tantalizing a target. even though 98SE is an Open Book, it doesn't get exploited because being able to take over the two Pentium 133 machines that are running on the internet isn't really worth it. Quote There is no need for every computer out there to be tied to the internet.Let's be honest here- do you have any actual usage scenarios that come up OUTSIDE of specific enthusiast purposes? I can't think of any. I mean, I run Windows 98SE on a 133Mhz Laptop, and have even purchased some replacement parts for it, but I don't have any specific use for it. And most of the usages I can think of for an XP-grade machine (say 1.6Ghz P4) are things that can be done at least as well by a Linux distribution anyways, with the added benefit of the Linux distribution being more modern. (I'm thinking File/Media servers and whatnot). Quote You can have a group of systems running on a private network with out of date OS running perfectly flawless for years.Being able to run a system and being able to do anything useful with it are two different things. Having out-of-date even behind a firewall is still asking for trouble because it's still another vector or jump point that can be used to get into the network from outside. Even if it requires compormising things like the firewall or a VPN tunnel, somebody trying to get control of a system on the other side is going to spring for that XP system- at which point it can be used for a launching off point for future penetration.Quote If you run Windows 98SE it's almost impossible to get infected because new malware/drive-bys, exploits, etc. expect at least Windows XP or at least an NT Core. As XP's usage drops, so too will it being as tantalizing a target. even though 98SE is an Open Book, it doesn't get exploited because being able to take over the two Pentium 133 machines that are running on the internet isn't really worth it. This gave me an interesting thought.... that they should have active honey pots out there with virtual systems that are vulnerable, to snag/redirect a hacker to a fake system, but crippled to where they cant use them to do anything. Can you imagine the frustration of a hacker of probing with millions of false positives, but only maybe 4000 of them real systems. And if the ISP themselves had these hosted it would mean that the ISP's that dont have these active honeypots would be where the hackers would then focus because why bother wasting time with so much noise of fake systems to deal with, when the other ISP that doesnt have this would be where the hackers would want to hunt for their prey. But also you are correct in that 98SE probably isnt that bad anymore since very few use it online so its days of being targeted are just about over. My systems running older offline OS btw are mainly to play games designed during the period that they were created by the hardware of the time for some games that dont play well with XP Compatibility mode etc on Windows 7 etc or strange graphics issues like Diablo 1 with an acid trip looking appearance with Windows 7 64-bit on modern hardware, yet it plays perfect on a old Dell Pentium III 1Ghz laptop with 20GB HDD running XP Home SP3 with Radeon 16MB GPU. As well as I have an old 1995 era Invoice Program that I have been using for years and it doesnt like Windows 7 32 or 64 bit and the newest OS that runs good with it is XP and it was designed back in Windows 95. Sure I could spend money and buy a new invoice program, but if what I have works, I will keep using it almost 20 years later. The good thing is that I have doPDF on the system and so I can create them and create pdf's and then throw them onto a thumb drive and then use my Windows 7 system to e-mail them to clients for work I did for them etc.XP can be compared to Racehorse. It was very sleek, lean and fast when it was first released may years ago. Now, it’s gotten old, slow and suffers from any ailments that the doctor (Microsoft) is no longer able to cure. (Patch) Think about trading this tired old Race Horse for a fast new filly. Quote Think about trading this tired old Race Horse for a fast new filly. Not all computers to be bought new are speedy!!! There are still those electron sippers that are available for Windows 8.1 that would never be a gaming system for example with what is the equivilent to a modern Atom processor or mobile APU at 1.2Ghz etc. Meanwhile that Pentium 4 2.8Ghz is still able to play games like World of Warcraft with a GeForce 8800GT VIDEO card happily running Windows XP SP3. To the defense of your statement though, "YES", XP did take a performance hit between XP SP0 and XP SP3. I had a laptop that was a Pentium III 600 Mhz with 384MB RAM that was happily running XP SP2, however after SP3 and fully patched it was a slugs pace. I thought that maxing it out at 512MB RAM would cure the issue. So I spent $12 to upgrade to 512MB RAM and while it did pick up the pace some, it still was not as fast as SP2. So since this laptop was never used online anyways I figured I really dont need SP3, and so I used the Ghost image I had for it and pushed it back to Windows XP SP2 and it ran just fine..... until the lithium battery that was about 11 or 12 years old leaked in the CD/DVD ROM bay which the Dell allowed you to place an extra battery into this bay to keep it alive longer without wall power and the acid ate the contacts of this port as well as ate the traces on the main board which meant that I had to have a recycle bin funeral for the once good Pentium III Dell Laptop after removing the HDD with my data on it.Quote from: DaveLembke on May 09, 2014, 05:22:27 PM To the defense of your statement though, "YES", XP did take a performance hit between XP SP0 and XP SP3. I had a laptop that was a Pentium III 600 Mhz with 384MB RAM that was happily running XP SP2, however after SP3 and fully patched it was a slugs pace.I had a [emailprotected] for the first year or two I was a member of this forum. It used SP3 and I didn't notice any performance hit from installing SP3 (or SP2 for that matter). It had 512MB of RAM however I increased performance by downgrading it to 256MB of RAM because only the first 256MB was cacheable. I never ran any benchmarks but I noticed no perceptible loss when I upgraded, and a perceptible gain when I removed 256MB (Cache is pretty important) As I've said before I don't understand the admiration that Windows XP gets. The only thing it is is the first consumer-oriented version of Windows that uses Windows NT; and additionally, as a very result of that fact it was greeted with scorn. People complained that they couldn't start in DOS mode to run their ancient programs, or to run their DOS games; they could no longer diagnose and try to fix boot issues by dropping to DOS and screwing around with INI files, they had to learn about new underpinnings and could no longer rely on a DOS core that they understood. It's UI changes were equally criticized; between it's Themes being considered exorbinant and the rearranged start menu being just plain stupid, users had no shortage of complaints about the system. As an example- every time I use XP, since only a week after upgrading to Vista, I Find it a bit frustrating. Too often I find myself typing into a unaccepting Start Menu before realizing that it has no Search capabilities. So I end up having to drill down into the oh-so-wonderfully designed Programs Menu, which is designed for people who have maybe 10 programs and for whatever reason memorize the company name of every single product they own. I cannot speak for others but when I want to start a Program, I am usually thinking about the program, not whoever made it- if you forget who wrote it you have to go through all your menus to find it. If only there was a way I could type the name of a program and have windows search for me... And that's fine. It wasn't designed at a time where that sort of feature would run very well on the systems of the day. Even so, however, computers are supposed to be doing that sort of monotonous work- so the existence of individuals who will buy the latest i7 processors and a high-end graphics card and then atrophy that new system by installing an ancient OS that requires the CPU to run in a compatibility mode that locks it out of many modes of operation is boggling. I can at least understand it being used on the systems that are too old for newer systems. Personally, I've upgraded all the systems I have that run XP to Linux Mint 16, but they don't have a requirement to run Windows Applications. |
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