AmIRunningXP.com

[Purple]

Do you know a single person who users a computer who doesn't at least have an general idea on what a "firewall" is? I spent a lot of time explaining not only what they are, but why they were needed when I worked IT from 2000-2006. However, later on in my career I had to explain it less and less. "Firewall" is now a commonly known term due to no small part of Microsoft bungling the XP launch.

I have an acquaintance who bought a laptop from a store with pre installed Windows 7, firewalls and NOD AV with a legal license and everything you can imagine. A few months ago he called me up with a problem saying his PC keeps running slow, shutting down at random and generally behaving like the generic other battery bunny from the Duracell commercial. After a rather long and painful diagnostic I eventually got him to talk me through his start up routine.

Apparently, when ever he logs in to his windows account Eset NOD antivirus starts loading and displays a neat loading screen right in the middle to tell you it's starting up. And the good man, ever in a hurry and feeling waiting two seconds was too long simply right clicks on the NOD icon in the right bottom corner and closes his AV. Each and every bloody time.

So yes, allow me to underline and repeat this. The first thing this person who purchased a computer solely for the purpose of internet browser does each and every time when he turns on his PC is turn his antivirus off manually.
I have no idea how he caught a virus or two doing that. But apparently it happened.

I'm not a programmer. I have and always will be a hardware guy.

Ah, you are the guy that sets them up to fail so we can bail them out!

[StarSword]

Talk about user stupidity, a friend of my dad's does tech support for the county school system and got a call from somebody whose "trackball" wasn't working. I have trackball in quotes there because when Chris shows up, what the idiot actually has is an upside-down mouse. Chris turns it over and idiot goes, "Oh, now it's a mouse!"

And I've had it happen to me too. I came back from winter break to discover the wired Internet wasn't working in my dorm room, and the wireless is a lot slower and the signal's erratic. I nearly ended up having Time Warner come over to fix a problem that turned out to be nothing more than the off switch for the cable box having been bumped when I was taking my setup apart to go home. Thank God for the guy at the tech support desk who thought to ask, "Is it plugged in?"

Rule #1 of programming or engineering: You can never idiot-proof things enough, because idiots are so imaginative.

[Edi]

I still work in IT, specifically consumer tech support, and I see all kinds of things every day. Mostly the user mistakes are out of ignorance, more rarely out of outright stupidity, though when they are, they tend to be massive bloopers.

Most people in their 50s and above have little idea of how computers work, never mind the modems or other equipment they use. It's a rote of "plug the cables in and the pretty lights go on and then I have internet". Little beyond that, though awareness of issues is increasing slowly.

Then there are the cases where it takes ten ninutes to find the space bar on the keyboard...

[Purple]

Ah, but there is also part 2 of the story. You see, the big problem with being a programing student who gets drafted to run tech support for friends and family members is that you can't just hang up and refuse service when some weeks after getting their laptop cleaned, reinstalled and fixed and me explaining in great detail why it is suicidal to shut of your AV the same person calls with the exact same story again...

[Torben]

I am the IT Support person for (for our area) a relatively large high school. My school district has over 100 locations, each with their own IT Support person and then a group in the district office.
Every day I have to teach users on how NOT to click on links in emails saying their accounts will be closed if they don't hand over their usernames and passwords. People with Masters and Doctorate degrees, hired to teach children. Many of them are under the age of 30, having grown up with computers. Those that are older have at least worked in an office setting with computers for over a decade. Our district recently experienced a 3 day long DDOS attack. I tried explaining to my users the idea of malware infecting computers allowing someone else to control them and knock people off the internet by basically overloading their internet. The general response was "wow, they can do that?" or "well, just fix it". Maybe it's because I live in Southwest Florida, but that level of tech education is quite common in the area.
In short, while I agree that just having an XP computer connected to a LAN, as long as the Windows firewall is turned on and it is behind SPI router won't be the end of the world, I also know that at least in this area, it would not take much at all to get someone to install some nasty that XP is vulnerable to because Microsoft isn't patching holes any longer.
Like I tell my users every day, the internet is becoming a dark and scary place. You need to be smart and stay safe.

And, Purple, that is exactly why I refuse to work for family and friends any longer. Too many instances where I keep doing the same fix because they refuse to listen, and they want it done yesterday for free.

[Edi]

I still do stuff for friends and family, but mainly under the following conditions:
* they get to tell me what they want to do with the machine
* I get to decide how I make it possible for them
* aside from my parents, they bring the machine to me
* if they ignore my instructions on how to avoid fucking things up, they get to fix it themselves

That last point is basically the reason why I don't do my sister's IT anymore. Or would be if she even bothered to ask me, but the last time I said I'll fix her stuff if she brings it to me, that never happened.

Most of the family is also smart enough to actually understand the explanations and even if they don't understand it all, they are smart enough to follow instructions, so I have thankfully little support stuff to do. One friend of mine needs some help maybe once every five or six years and I've known him for over 30 years, so he gets help. The rest of my closer friends can take care of their own computers well enough that if they start needing my help beyond a question or two, it's format time.

[TheFeniX]

I'm not a programmer. I have and always will be a hardware guy.

Ah, you are the guy that sets them up to fail so we can bail them out!

Funny. I've had the same experience with programmers. Those I've worked with tend to lack inter-personal skills required for IT. One even said "I got into IT because I'm not a people person." I told him he needed a career switch. He also thought it was a good idea to argue with a customer about protocol terminology rather than just repunching a CAT5 drop. Not to say this is indicative of all programmers, but my experience with them is that they need a buffer between themselves and "normal" people. And dealing with Cisco, 3COM, and in-house programmers, among others, I've heard it all. Cisco IOS guys were particularly loopy, in a good way mind you. They would shit bricks and talk your ear off once they found out you actually knew what you were doing and had already trouble-shot issues before calling.

My joke has always been that the difference between software and hardware guys is that hardware guys are just as weird, but we can pass for normal when the need arises.

[Purple]

We can pass of as normal just fine too. Just don't ask us about our job.

[Borgholio]

run tech support for friends and family members is that you can't just hang up and refuse service

Bullshit, I do that all the time. My mom is computer-clueless, and no matter how many times I explain how to be safe online or to ask me first, I always find a shitload of toolbars and things installed on her computer whenever I remotely log in. So I end up locking down her computer so tight she can barely do anything. When she bitches at me about it I tell her, "Hey, I'm tired of fixing the things you break. Unless you start paying me for this or listening to what I say, I'm going to lock down your computer for your own safety. Don't like it? Tough. Don't ask me for help again.

[StarSword]

Yeah, some people you should just force to use Linux if all they're doing is web browsing and office stuff. At least that way it's hard to break anything by accident.

[Purple]

run tech support for friends and family members is that you can't just hang up and refuse service

Bullshit, I do that all the time. My mom is computer-clueless, and no matter how many times I explain how to be safe online or to ask me first, I always find a shitload of toolbars and things installed on her computer whenever I remotely log in. So I end up locking down her computer so tight she can barely do anything. When she bitches at me about it I tell her, "Hey, I'm tired of fixing the things you break. Unless you start paying me for this or listening to what I say, I'm going to lock down your computer for your own safety. Don't like it? Tough. Don't ask me for help again.

No offense. But some of us here actually want to stay on good terms with other people.

[Borgholio]

No offense. But some of us here actually want to stay on good terms with other people.

No offense taken, but some of us here actually want to spend time doing something other than hand-holding an electronic troglodyte.

[Mr Bean]

No offense. But some of us here actually want to stay on good terms with other people.

No offense taken, but some of us here actually want to spend time doing something other than hand-holding an electronic troglodyte.

No offense but some of us are payed handsomely for hand-holding an electronic troglodyte.

Oh wait you mean your family. Yeah I'll be blunt my own dear mother comes at computers with a vial of holy water and a cross. The only reason she lacks silver bullets is her hatred of guns. You can explain the same thing to her six times, walked her through it twice and she's forgotten it before you've cleared the room.

Now if I ignore the issue and let her struggle and search she will eventually work it out for herself remember the 1 way that works and do it that way every time. I can live with that.

[Purple]

My family and friends aren't nearly that illiterate. They can use their computers just fine 9 out of 10 times. Hell they even chat on skype. It's just that on the 10th they tend to turn the AV off or generally make up for lost time. So I don't get called up to help that often. But when I do get called it's just rare and crazy enough that if I refused them they would have to flat out go and pay someone a pretty sum which would be seen like a rather dick. Something that is unacceptable to a person for whom family relations are near the top of the list of things that matter in life.

[DaZergRock54444]

Nearest as I can tell, Microsoft has already shut down updates for fresh installs of XP.

And before I'm burnt at the stake for fresh installing XP in 2014, I'm doing it for practical reasons (I only have access to an XP install disk).

[Borgholio]

They shut down updates? Really? As I recall from Win98, you can still get updates that already exist...just no new ones. If you can't even download existing updates now, that's gonna hurt a lot of people.

[Mr Bean]

They shut down updates? Really? As I recall from Win98, you can still get updates that already exist...just no new ones. If you can't even download existing updates now, that's gonna hurt a lot of people.

You can still download updates the issue is most computers unless they are service pack 3 won't see the update servers because they are not set up the same way they used to be with the website and what not. So you need to take a fresh xp install, upgrade it to service pack 2, then service pack 3 then run windows update.

Speaking of XP today a client made the choice to spend 300$ resuscitating a old Fujitsu xp laptop rather than.. oh I don't know buy a new laptop 10x better for the same 300$

[White Haven]

Or just stop using a fossilized XP disc. Install on an SP3 (or SP2, if you happen to have an incredibly old key) and most of that problem goes away, plus you save oodles of time anyway. XP has problems, and shouldn't ever be used if there are viable alternatives, but that isn't one of them.

[DaZergRock54444]

Or just stop using a fossilized XP disc. Install on an SP3 (or SP2, if you happen to have an incredibly old key) and most of that problem goes away, plus you save oodles of time anyway. XP has problems, and shouldn't ever be used if there are viable alternatives, but that isn't one of them.

It's an SP2 disc, my gripe is that windows update wasn't working in a fashion that allowed me to update to SP3. But after seeing the other posts, I'll try manually installing SP3.

[Zaune]

I have to ask this: Is there any Windows-exclusive application you absolutely must run on this thing, and if so, does that application require an active Internet connection to be useful?

[Executor32]

Here's the standalone installer for SP3, if you hadn't already found it.

[Edi]

Service packs not installing through Windows XP and Vista is a common problem. Fortunately not for much longer on XP, given that it finally gets the axe. But with Vista it's common as dirt. Then you need to download the separate executable and install that, and quite often you also need to use the system update readiness tool to fix Windows Update first.

Happens a lot less on Windows 7.

[DaZergRock54444]

There is one application that requires XP, but it simply eases the workflow rather than being an integral part of it.

No, the reason that I am using XP is that it is literally the only Windows installation disk I own. And I cannot afford to go out and spend $120 to buy Win7, let alone to buy Win8 keys for each machine that I'm ending up wiping.

[Purple]

Don't forget the hardware upgrades required to run them. You can basically run XP on less than 1 gig of ram and a 5+ year old machine just fine (I have an ancient laptop that still runs XP). So if you were late to upgrade your hardware due to other costs getting in the way you might end up having to buy a lot of new parts just to get it going. And really given intelligent use and third party security software the danger is just not there. And without paranoia the new windows systems simply don't offer that much in terms of improvement over XP in any way.

[Edi]

There is one application that requires XP, but it simply eases the workflow rather than being an integral part of it.

No, the reason that I am using XP is that it is literally the only Windows installation disk I own. And I cannot afford to go out and spend $120 to buy Win7, let alone to buy Win8 keys for each machine that I'm ending up wiping.

If nothing else, you should look into the possibility of switching over to Linux, if you can do the same things on it that you now use Windows to do. If you have proprietary software that you absolutely require and which is not available for Linux or does not have an equivalent replacement there, then the switch is obviously not an option.

Your old XP machines should have no trouble running 32-bit versions of most distros with a light desktop environment like XFCE. It only gets trickier if you have truly ancient wrecks still in service (on the order of 512 MB or less RAM and possible other hardware limitations). It won't cost you more than the price of the USB stick used for installation, download of a CD/DVD ISO image and then the work required, which will also allow you to learn. Assuming, of course, that the switch is a viable alternative.