Windows XP PCs Breed Rootkit Infections 245
CWmike writes "Machines running the decade-old Windows XP make up a huge reservoir of infected PCs that can spread malware to other systems, a Czech antivirus company said. Windows XP computers are infected with rootkits out of proportion to the operating system's market share, according to data released Thursday by Avast Software, which surveyed more than 600,000 Windows PCs. While XP now accounts for about 58% of all Windows systems in use, 74% of the rootkit infections found by Avast were on XP machines. Avast attributed the infection disparity between XP and Windows 7 to a pair of factors: The widespread use of pirated copies of the former and the latter's better security. Vlcek assumed that many of the people running XP SP2, which Microsoft stopped supporting with security patches a year ago, have declined to update to the still-supported SP3 because they are running counterfeits."
water still wet (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:water still wet (Score:5, Interesting)
I've actually seem stories with other numbers as well, where most of the new malware for windows is coming out for Windows 7; Windows XP already has enough malware and people don't seem to be writing any new ones. The old ones already work fine I guess.
Why write new malware? (Score:3)
The other day, I was looking at yet another hyperbolic report from Symantec that 60,000 new malware variants are released per day. Among the many reasons I find this claim dubious is that it's pretty damned obvious that most malware infections are on old Windows XP installations, which is significantly less secure than newer versions of Windows, especially if they're not being updated regularly. And in those circumstances, why would anyone be wasting time and effort writing new malware, when old malware can
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Actually, there are tools to generate new variants. I'm surprised they don't use the botnets directly to build it on the fly before they distribute it.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Windows should be FREE for cosumers (Score:2)
Microsoft makes the majority of their money from OEM and business. The number of people buying boxed copies of windows is pretty small in proportion. If they would just give it away (or for a small fee) to consumers they would get a lot of good Karma AND cut down on people trying to steal it.
They can EASILY afford it.
It would be a good business decision.
Re:water still wet (Score:4, Informative)
The difference is if UAC is active and you are using a Chromium based or IE so that you have low rights mode (WTF Firefox? it has been FOUR YEARS already, get on the ball!) it is actually pretty damned hard to infect Windows 7 without getting the user actively involved.
Thats not entirely accurate. UAC is generally avoided by detecting whether the user has admin rights, and if so, rooting the machine; if not, installing a virus that launches on user login, stored to %appdata%. This can perform the role of "User-mode rootkit" (if you dont believe such a thing exists, google "n00bkit"), effectively locking down such things as task manager, registry editor, etc, at least for the current user (I dont believe UAC is tripped when writing to HKCU registry hive)-- and on MOST home machines, there is only one user, and users are not aware of how to remove such infections in such a scenario.
As for Chrome and IE, IE has some protection from its sandbox mode, but you still have to deal with the fact that MOST infections seem to stem from out of date plugins-- Java, Quicktime, Reader, Flash-- which effectively load external DLLs outside of the controls and protections of the browser. If you have a Java vulnerability which allows arbitrary code and privelege escalation, it matters not whether you use IE or Chrome or XP or seven (except insofar as ASLR, DEP, etc mitigate the flaw).
Chrome DOES have the benefit that it automatically updates its PDF and SWF plugins, which mitigates that attack vector by quite a bit; but a 0-day flash exploit will infect you just as easily regardless of browser.
UAC DOES, of course, make it about a zillion times easier to remove the virus, as a non-escalated virus install cannot infect the MBR, patch the kernel or system drivers, etc, and is easily removed by launching a startup editor with elevated permissions.
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And there is a simple way to mitigate that, it is called defense in depth. So far I haven't had a single Win 7 PC I did defense in depth on get infected.
Simple?
After reading that, I am SO glad I don't use Windows myself, and a great deal more sympathetic to all those relatives and friends who come for help with their hosed computers.
Yes, it is a surprise. (Score:2)
Check the old /. threads. ..."? Marketshare was identified as the deciding factor in what "mal-ware" was written.
How many times have you seen the claim that "if Linux had the same marketshare as Windows
Now this seems to contradict those claims.
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There's better evidence that contradicts that claim.
This article could be interpreted to mean that there isn't a one-to-one correspondence between the popularity of an operating system: that malware authors tend to jump on the bandwagon, for instance. (I was trying to come up with a good way to describe the model mathematically, but the flashbacks to calculus were making my hands shake.)
This actually suggests it's own solution (Score:2)
I think we should hang a trillion rootable XP virtual machines on the web. The virus will be so busy infecting all these decoys that it won't be able to find the real machines. We can constantly reset these virtual machines back to clean so they won't be propagating the infection, just chewing up the time of the computers sending out the viruses.
problem solved :-)
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Yeah, right.
And when your trillion PC botnet decides to phone home and shuts down the whole internet, then what?
Even on the backbone of the net, there is NOT infinite bandwidth.
people need to upgrade (Score:5, Funny)
so rootkit authors can focus on Windows 7
Or reinstall... (Score:3, Insightful)
The claims above are likely more due to the length of time of the install than anything to do with the OS itself. I've had my current install of windows for like four years. Nobody with Windows 7 can say that about their OS. And a lot of times spyware ridden machines just stay that way. I demand they look at the data from "time since install" and tell me that that isn't just directly correlated and explains away most of the XP dataset.
Complain to your application's maintainer (Score:2)
losing all their work when Microsoft decides it is time for your system to receive a security patch
Complain to your application's maintainer. Windows notifies applications before the system is about to restart for updates. Applications that don't save the user's work are defective.
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My mainframe access is via a terminal emulator running under Windows. That is not the sort of thing which can simply be 'saved'.
Since mainframe access is via VPN which means a firewall blocks Microsoft Update, not normally a problem. Once though, I booted, waited for Net traffic to cease (meaning the virus scanner had updated) and then fired up the VPN. A couple of minutes later, some out-of-sync update finished applying itself and it then informed me it was going to boot in a few seconds. That was when
Anything like GNU Screen? (Score:2)
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Any update system that forces a reboot at an arbitrary time without giving the user the option of when is convenient for them is defective. I'll reboot, on MY schedule, not the computer's. There is no excuse to not offer this flexibility.
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then give them a time limit, but don't force them to do it now, give them 24 hours, somewhere in there they can find a convenient time. but forcing an immediate reboot just pisses people off and makes them turn off updates at all.
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If the user's not present, where is it supposed to save the work to? You certainly don't want to overwrite the previous save without asking. %APPDATA%\myapp? And now you have to check on startup to see if anything was saved there and let the user know about it if so, because the user sure is going to have a hard time finding it
M$ guidelines for handling WM_ENDSESSION (Score:2)
%APPDATA%\myapp? And now you have to check on startup to see if anything was saved there and let the user know about it
This is exactly the behavior that I expect, and exactly the behavior that applications such as Firefox, Cool Edit Pro, and the like implement. In fact, I seem to remember reading that Microsoft recommends that an application register itself to run once at next login if there happen to be unsaved changes that the user hasn't chosen to save or discard. From Microsoft's guidelines for applications to interact with Restart Manager [microsoft.com]:
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I was giving a lesson (something I don't like doing but there's a genuine need for it around here) to a geezer on composing emails and Windows Update shut us down in the middle of it. I was concentrating on what he was doing and somehow missed the warning (it certainly wasn't in focus), and all we saw was a prompt to save the message being composed, and it went away too quickly and the PC rebooted. ("ding") The old boy was a real laborious typer too and he lost his message.
It's not the application that is d
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This isn't Unix, and processes don't inherently save their data when they suddenly get a polite signal to terminate.
Windows GUI applications that don't save on receiving WM_ENDSESSION do not follow Microsoft's guidelines. I wrote more about this in my previous comment [slashdot.org].
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I hate to break it to you but often an update is required. This is because windows cannot replace a file that is open. This seems to be single user legacy stuff. Always makes me laugh about how stoneage windows is.
pirates can get security updates (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:pirates can get security updates (Score:5, Insightful)
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yea if your connected directly to the internet like your cablemodem direct into PC or dialup, otherwise no it wont
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That's why you download the admin version of the service packs *first* and burn them onto CD. Although admittedly most people wouldn't think to do that.
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>>Well to be fair, if you install windows XP from a recovery image or from an original CD you have from the original version, your computer could probably be pwned before you even have the time to download the service packs.
I once watched a friend of mine get extremely frustrated as he kept reinstalling XP over and over, only to have it get owned before the patching finished.
I finally took pity on him and put a hardware firewall between his computer and the internet... after, I think, the third time i
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Well to be fair, if you install windows XP from a recovery image or from an original CD you have from the original version, your computer could probably be pwned before you even have the time to download the service packs.
Microsoft will gladly ship you SP3 on CD. Order Windows XP Service Pack 3 on a CD [microsoft.com] The offer is available globally, and has been from the beginning.
You could, of course, simply download the service pack and install XP off-line.
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and grab the AutoPatcher offline patch set while you are at it so you can get the post sp3 patches installed before you go online for the first time (hint MSSE comes as part of the last few patch sets)
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get out of here normal person, any nerd with a half of brain would have just gone to the boxes IP address as its just a little router that you plop a user name and password in
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That's why you disconnect the computer from the Internet before downloading the updates. Oh, wait...
That's why you manually download the updates from technet.microsoft.com on a known good computer and sneakernet them to the newly installed computer.
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Microsoft makes it hard for genuine users.
Pirates download the latest update very easily.
If your one of the millions of legitimate users out there that just want to replace a failed hard drive in an old pc, or grab one of the millions of off lease pc's on the market that usually come sans hard drive, you will likely use an old install CD. This makes it a real pain to get all the service packs installed.
MS really should have the latest fully patched XP ISO downloadable right from their web site. It is not
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That depends on where you are. In Germany, Microsoft has run warning dialogs that security updates may break your installation if you use an illegal copy. Microsoft has integrated WGA with the update process, making people using illegal copies uneasy about using the update process. There have even been conflicted statements about whether critical updates are available to everyone. Apparentl
Pirates don't want memory-upgrades then (Score:3, Informative)
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512MB DDR memory: $16
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820236106 [newegg.com]
512MB DDR2 memory: $12
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148239 [newegg.com]
So around $40 or €26 (incl. shipping) for 1GB memory. Is that really so difficult?
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Two comments about my own comment:
1. I read the parent as being a computer repair tech originally, but I'm not so sure on second reading.
2. Newegg apparently doesn't ship outside the U.S., but Amazon does (prices are a little higher though).
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Shrug. I don't happen to have a spare $139 and Windows XP runs my applications just fine. It's important to remember, the OS isn't the application. The OS runs applications.
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My old system runs perfectly fine.
That doesn't mean that you're not an idiot for not installing the free updates/upgrades that Microsoft provides for security reasons. That was the GP's point, you realize? He's not suggesting people go out and buy a copy of Windows 7 because they're using Windows XP, he's suggesting that they log in to Windows update and install the critical service updates and service packs.
MS prevents pirates from getting new features. They don't prevent pirates from getting security updates. That's because MS, as evil ov
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Not only is it not free, it's ridiculously priced for just something I use to load Adobe Photoshop.
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I predict you will be a proponent of the "greater good" right up to the moment it unjustly affects you.
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If you are infected with a root-kit, and are now spreading disease to my modern OS, your apathy is part of the problem.
If your computer's getting infected with malware, then that's your fault, not other people's. Or does your reasoning only apply in one direction?
The real root cause (Score:2)
Most people worldwide genuinely can't pay $250+ [amazon.com] for an operating system.
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I can find Windows 7 Home Premium x64 [newegg.com] for $95, a much more affordable amount than $250. If you have one of the few PCs that can only run 32 bit OSes, that one is $5 more.
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The only "problem" with that version is that it's for system builders. This could be a problem if someone needs support (and if they're still running XP, they just might need a little help doing upgrades).
Limitation of OEM licensing (Score:2)
The only "problem" with that version is that it's for system builders.
In fact, it might even be copyright infringement to buy and install that version on your own computer. Microsoft says [microsoft.com] OEM software is for computers you plan to sell at arm's length, not for computers you plan to use.
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$95 is a more realistic price for Windows 7 for most users willing and able to pay for software. However, even in wealthy parts of the world, people who think it's reasonable to buy computer hardware often don't think it's reasonable to buy software, since it's so easy to get bootleg software. In much of the world, "legit" proprietary software is practically unheard of, and since you want bootleg Windows XP to run bootleg Microsoft Office or bootleg Starcraft, you don't have any interest in Fedora or Ubuntu
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Most people genuinely don't have to pay that much for the operating system, thanks to bundling agreements and volume licensing. I bought my current laptop with Ubuntu preinstalled on it. I saved $30 off the cost of the exact same laptop, with the exact same spec, with Windows 7 Home Premium x64 preinstalled. Ergo, the Windows tax is net only $30. Yes, I would have had to deal with the preinstalled crap that comes with it, but it's a Dell, and it's in their business line of products (Vostro v130, if you feel
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If everyone jumped onto the free operating system bandwagon overnight, you would have the very same problem. Only it would come in the form of "Hello Kitty Ubuntu: a cute computer for cute girls" or "Machobuntu: the rugged OS for the tough guy." (Sorry about the stereotypes, but grandma said she'd root my box if I poked fun at the elderly yet again.)
Then there are other attack vectors. The basic problem is that most people don't have the ability to verify the authenticity of the stuff that they install.
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A) you didnt make the product, you dont set the rules. Microsoft made it, they get to set the rules, both by any sane legal standard, and by common sense.
Problem is, this collides with the only sane standard regarding physical property (I get to do what I want with my property, as long as it doesn't directly affect anyone else). So, for example, I have the right to do whatever I want with my burner and my blank disks, including making copies, since it at most has an indirect effect on someone's future sales.
Our sense of morality is often based on what we're used to - what we think is absolute, is really just a convention that's been drilled into us from such
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Problem is, this collides with the only sane standard regarding physical property (I get to do what I want with my property, as long as it doesn't directly affect anyone else).
And apparently you dont understand what a contract is. When you "purchase" Microsoft software (and certainly once you click the "I AGREE TO THE ABOVE" box during install), you have entered into an agreement with them. You could argue that its a shrinkwrap license, and not enforceable, but that gets a LOT less compelling when you read Slashdot and know darn well what the contract says and that it is a part of the conditions of use (and again, you have to click "i agree", or intentionally bypass that page w
Well better plan for windows 7 to go long term (Score:2)
Well better plan for windows 7 to go long term as the NEW GUI in windows 8 make it vista / ME 2. And seeing how good windows 7 is Big business may just stick to it for a long time like they did with windows XP.
Re:Windows 8 GUI (Score:2)
I bet someone will come up with a utility that restores the GUI back to sanity.
Another Reason: Time (Score:3)
1. The probability getting an infection increases with time.
2. The average person probably does not format their system and give a clean install until the system becomes nearly unusable (it would cost them money and time).
3. Windows XP has been in use for a long time.
Given these, I would figure that another reason why there would be so many infected PCs with XP out there is that the XP installations have been in use for a lot longer than any of the newer OS installations. I would go as far as to guess that most people today would rather buy a new PC than get a professional to reinstall XP, meaning that these systems currently running XP would have been installed quite a number of years ago.
Just a thought...
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And the system becomes unusable due to all the file logging going on. Whenever I upgrade the OS on my system, I always like to do an audit of where all the file space has gone. First of all, backup all project data, then remove them. Remove all download files (rpm's, zip's, exe's, bz2's, webpages) and personal files). With all those gone, there shouldn't be any considerable file space used, yet gigabytes of space were still used...
As someone who's done rendering and animation, and used the file browser to p
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IME you are quite right. Bubba and LaQueefa run their machines until they stop working, which can be a very long time. They can't afford professional repair rates, so it's either have a local geek reload warez (because they lost the recovery media) or buy a new PC.
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My friend's aunt gladly takes her computer to the local repair shop and probably spends plenty of money to get it up and running again, after she continually fucks it up... over and over... by basically doing everything I've given her advice in the past on NOT doing. I remember she once told me something along the lines of, "you know so much about computers, you need to go to college and get a job with them, then you can fix mine for me." So yeah, there are, in fact, people who for whatever reason only "t
"counterfeits" (Score:3)
It always bugs me to hear people use "counterfeit" when talking about illegally copied or distributed software. Do people not understand what these words mean? Apparently not, since we're still talking about "piracy" in a non-piracy sense.
If someone in China were to dress up Linux to look like Windows and sell it as if it were MS Windows, that'd be counterfeit. But so-called "pirated" Windows XP installations are not counterfeit, obviously. I guess it's all about manipulating public thought. Is your copy of windows "genuine?" The thought is quite silly if you think about it. Of course it is genuine. It's windows isn't it? Legal copy? That's the real question. Genuine advantage indeed.
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The CDs are made to look like the ones from Microsoft, complete with fake holograms. How is that not a counterfeit?
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As a happy Ubuntu user, I can't say for sure, but my guess is that Bill Gates does not label official MS CDs in felt tip pen.
W7 less secure than XP? (Score:3, Interesting)
> Windows XP computers are infected with rootkits out of proportion to the operating system's market share
This statement lacks considering time the OS are in use:
XP 11 years - since 2001
W7 2 years - since 2009
So, with 2 years W7 gathered 12 % of infections having 31 % market share, that's 6 % infections/year
and 11 years of XP gathered 74 % of infections having 58 % market share, that's 6.7 % infections/year
Since market share started from 0, let's assume linear increase of market share since release and use W7 with 16.5 % and XP with 37 % average market share over time.
W7 gets 6 % infections/year with 16.5 % market share and XP 6.7 % infections/year with 37 % market share.
Which give factors for W7 0.37 and XP 0.18 infections/year/market share.
W7 more secure? Fat chance!
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And a jolly good thing, too (Score:2)
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Yeah! The vast potential of customers who don't like to pay for their software, that market is totally untapped!
No, wait, I think the malware business has that market covered and monetized pretty good, actually. And some of those companies specialize in spreading their own anti-malware kits too. I think it'll be really hard to enter that market for legitimate anti-malware companies.
Auto-update failure keeps people at SP2 (Score:5, Informative)
Interesting ... (Score:2, Interesting)
... so in spite of the (supposed) improved security of Win7 and the (in comparison) short time it has been around, a quarter of all infections are on Win7? ...
While it is understandable that the decade old OS is easier to attack, this is definitely no good track record for Win7
RTFA (Score:2)
Guess you should read the article.
"XP's share of the infection pie was much larger than Windows 7's, which accounted for only 12% of the malware-plagued machines -- even though the 2009 OS now powers 31% of all Windows PCs."
There are move versions of Win than XP and 7.
When was the last time you reinstalled XP? (Score:2)
Microsoft changed the license years ago so buyers of brand new PCs really don't have any choice, if they want to reinstall their machines, other than taking them back to the shop (and spend $$$) or install a pirated version.
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Fantastic spin. I believe you though. The fact that install CDs are not provided with new machines is likely to be a tremendous contributing factor. All the people I know who have software problems on their computers (and as the regional volunteer "friend support" [because friends don't let friends go to BestBuy!]) also invariably fail to create restore media from their hidden and space-wasting partitions. (Most recently, a person I know with a Sony Viao (yeah, I know... sony) has been getting constant
Yep (Score:2)
So everyone go out right now and pay the $139 for Windows Home Premium. I'll wait...
(This should cause a measurable bump in the economy. Any moment now...)
Re:Yep -- no bump (Score:2)
That sucking sound isn't the economy being inflated -- it's the sound of money being 'renditioned'.
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I happen to have a wholesaler within three miles from my house, but for most people that would be true. Or pay the $19 to have it shipped from Amazon.
Confirmation Bias? (Score:3)
It may not just be that the the remaining XP users are less careful/knowledgable/what-ever on average so aren't fully patched with service packs and so forth either by choice or ignorance. A lot of those XP installs have been around a long time, so have had a much longer period (compared to the average Windows 7 or Vista install) in which they could have been exposed to malware.
Many of the installs not properly patched up with security updates could be a symptom of this, rather than a cause, as there are plenty of examples of malware that block some or all updates from being installed (either accidentally due to the damage they do while hacking their way in, or deliberately as a self preservation measure).
My POV (Score:2)
The widespread use of pirated copies of the former and the latter's better security.
I attribute it mainly to the fact that Windows 7 by defaultt at least includes a basic AV software (Windows Defender) whereas Windows XP has none.
And don't mention UAC, please - most people either ignore it and answer YES to all its alerts or disable it altogether right after the installation.
And no, "pirated" versions of Windows XP (most of them are just a VLK version with a valid serial key included) have nothing to do with Windows XP security or lack of it.
Invalid comparison (Score:2)
We'll have to look at Win7 once it's been in the wild as long as XP.
Most XP machines are in China (Score:2)
According to gstats Windows 7 has already taken the majority of marketshare in the US. [statcounter.com]Only 1 out of 4 are still running XP. In comparison, most of China is heavily XP based [statcounter.com] with IE 6 being their default browser [statcounter.com] with 85% running pirated versions of XP which of course is totally different than a corporate locked down XP machine running IE 8, fully patched, with anti virus software you see in developed nations.
I would say it is not XP is the problem more than unpatched decade old computers in 3rd world countri
reasons to stay with SP2 over SP3 (Score:4, Interesting)
"Vlcek assumed that many of the people running XP SP2, which Microsoft stopped supporting with security patches a year ago, have declined to update to the still-supported SP3 because they are running counterfeits."
I, and many others I know in a forum I frequent, won't upgrade to SP3 as it breaks USB. It's a known bug (for many years) that USB becomes significantly slower in SP3 (it's not known what hardware configurations can avoid the bug). This causes problems with data transfer speeds.
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Unfortunately the effect is that it impacts others, these are the machines which get used as zombies for spamming, ddos attacks etc.
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There are plenty of legal copies. That has zilch to do with them getting rooted. Most PC users know nothing about security. Not "very little", but "nothing". That will never change.
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Most people can't afford to upgrade or don't know how, and are running PCs so old buying a new OS isn't worth it and buying more RAM adds to the expense.
Light Linux distros (can) work fine on older hardware but only geeks can learn more than one OS without their heads exploding. Ya gotta wanna.
Puppy Linux is popular with curious noobs (I use the term in the most friendly way!), but what is most needed is a simple distro designed to play Flash games, surf da intarweb, and watch Youtube. I could load that on
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The friendly way to call someone a newcomer is newbie, not noob.
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Ubuntu in recent incarnations is slow on machines without a lot of memory.
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http://bodhilinux.com/ [bodhilinux.com]
Minimalist. Can be full-featured, that stuff is available, but at its core, it gives you a desktop, an internet connection, and a browser. You will need to add Flash, because it's non-free, but it may be what you're looking for. :)
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Thanks! Looks interesting so I'll install in a VM then play with the memory and graphics settings to see how low it can go.
Plenty of seeders at the moment.
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It'll run at less than 64mb of RAM if you have a super-basic e17 environment going. :) On my current laptop, it's using 250mb or so, but that is with the e17 equivalent of compiz/fusion and a whole bunch of other programs open too. (chiefly firefox and pidgin, but also a few others that I need to play friendly with the network at work)
Re:really? (Score:5, Insightful)
I wasn't sure if this should be modded flamebait, since there doesn't seem to be an 'astroturf' rating. *Any* version of windows should not be on the internet without a separate firewall solution deployed. Period.
This just feels too much like a marketing FUD to make people buy more Microsft licenses.
- Dan.
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I agree - and I disagree.
The agreement is, Microsoft shouldn't have ever come to rule the computing world - or any segment of the computing world.
Reality, however, is what it is. We have an entire generation who grew up on free computers in schools, being taught by people who were basically Microsoft indoctrination agents. People know and demand Microsoft. So - since that is where we are at, we have to cooperate. It's time for all those MS-centric people who are still on XP to upgrade. If they insist t
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I've not come across anything since shortly after SP3 came out that has had any trouble at all (I still run XP as my main home desktop, and in VMs at work). Even our more conservative clients that won't yet move away from IE6 are running SP3, so presumably they have no problems even with some of the ancient software they run that they don't want to update/replace for one reason or another.
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Ah, yes, because using an insecure, malware-prone OS for gaming makes sense. Nothing like being part of a botnet, having your credit card and personal information stolen, and getting your gaming accounts hacked in order to shave 5ms off your ping and gain 10fps. Your hardware is going to have a vastly bigger impact on gaming performance than your OS, and frankly I'm not clear what gaming "circles" are, in 2011, wanting to use XP SP2 anymore unless they are using outdated hardware.
I think the bulk of these
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Just a quick note: Those sub-$400 computers frequently come with at least two of the following variables:
(1) No monitor
(2) Onboard Video
(3) 3GB or less RAM with Windows 7 booting up to 1.8GB RAM used.
(4) Sub-300w power supply (OK for greener computer, Bad for video cards)
(5) Bad computer case (either flashy buttons stacked on actual buttons, severe space limitations, etc.)
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PCs are vital nowadays, and most of the world can't casually shell out 400 bucks.
I can, but I know MANY folks who can't, including people with large families who need multiple PCs for their kids.
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Four hundred bucks is food for a month or more in much of the US.
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"might lose your software licenses keeps many people (including myself) from installing Windows 7."
Keyfinders are your friend.
So are VMs. I have XP and 7 running in Virtualbox, and if anything malfunctions I can revert to a Snapshot.