Tag: WINDOWSXP

Symptoms: There are a range of telltale signs that your PC has been infiltrated by a binary ne'er-do-well, but, counterintuitively, the worst case scenario is when there are no obvious symptoms at all. For starters, you may have an infection if your PC or Internet throughput has become consistently sluggish, and a restart doesn't cure it. Frequent, random pop-up windows with ads or system ...

It's been a slow and painful death for Windows XP, and it's not over yet. (If the operating system were a beloved pet, you'd have put it to sleep ages ago.) Microsoft plans to officially start barring manufacturers from selling computers preloaded with the aging OS on October 22nd, and Dell plans to get a head start on the phase-out by eliminating XP as an option from its direct sales site this ...

Windows XP refuses to die. Nine years after the OS first landed on the scene, an approximate 74-percent of business users are still saddled with it. To make matters worse, the average age of the PC running the outdated software is 4.4-years old, which means a vast majority of users are running already outdated software on hardware that is quickly approaching obsolescence, itself. Windows 7 is ...

Share Researchers at Matousec have discovered a new and particularly worrisome flaw in the Windows ecosystem that allows malware to completely bypass security software. Anti-virus software works by standing between applications and the Windows kernel, inspecting code before it has a chance to execute. Matousec passes benign code through a security suite, thus clearing the way for a program to ...

McAfee perfectly illustrated today why you're supposed to thoroughly test software updates before pushing them out to the general public. Consumers and IT support personnel around the country found themselves in a nightmare situation this afternoon; at best, their Windows XP-based machines simply couldn't connect to a network, but more often than not were stuck in an endless loop of reboots. ...

By the end of January 2011, almost all new hard drives sold will have switched to a new format that will increase their size and efficiency, but will leave those clinging to Windows XP frustrated. Traditionally, data on hard disks has been broken up into 512 byte chunks. Each broken-up sector requires additional space on a physical disk to mark the beginning and the end of each piece. Extra ...

Share digg_url ='http://www.switched.com/2010/03/02/microsoft-to-xp-users-dont-press-f1/'; If you're still using Windows XP, Microsoft has a piece of security advice for you: don't hit F1. A recently discovered vulnerability is disrupting how Windows XP handles VBScripts that are used to load Help files. Hackers could disguise malicious code as a Windows Help file (with the extension ...

Share Microsoft has had more than its fair share of problems with Windows updates. All too often, tiny updates and bug fixes result in unintended consequences of near catastrophic proportions. The latest "fix" is bad -- so bad, in fact, it'll make you long for the days when all that Windows updates did was quietly disable your anti-virus software. It seems that one Windows XP update, which ...

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has endured public criticism, and even public attacks (albeit with groceries), but an aspiring portrait artist has decided to honor the beleaguered executive with a mosaic. The only drawback is that the portrait is composed entirely of images that feature the dreaded Blue-Screen-of-Death (BSOD). For non-Windows users, the BSOD refers to the screen which appears on a ...

Share If you're a Windows user, it pretty much goes without saying that you've encountered a frozen program before. Often these jammed apps get labeled with the dreaded "Not Responding" message and simply refuse to do anything, even close. Usually, the only solution is to open the task manager, find the appropriate process, and choose to close it. Fortunately, a quicker and easier way exists. ...

One of the first things you should do if you think you have a virus is to quarantine your PC and disconnect from your home network to prevent the infection from spreading to other computers in your home. You don't want to disconnect from the Internet entirely however or you won't be able to download updates for your anti-virus software. Doing this on a Mac (in Preferences: Sharing) or in Vista ...

Microsoft may be doing its best to move past Windows XP once and for all, but a Los Angeles woman is alleging that the company is all too happy to bank some extra change on the OS in the meantime, and that it's essentially trying to have it both ways. As a result, she's now suing Microsoft over its XP "downgrade" fees, and requesting that the lawsuit be granted class-action certification so others ...

The old adage proves to be true -- you just don't know what you have until it's gone. Eight years after its release, Windows XP simply refuses to slip quietly into the night. Despite the litany of complaints against the aging operating system, users and PC manufacturers are loathe to embrace its successor Vista. We've lost track of the number of times that Microsoft has extended the life of XP ...

digg_url ='http://digg.com/microsoft/A_Big_Change_For_PC_Users'; While Windows Vista (launched in early 2007) addressed a number of Window's XP's biggest issues, most notably a much needed security refresh, Microsoft's most current operating system (OS) came with its own string of new headaches, like incessant pop-ups and some frustrating incompatibilities (not to mention its own set of ...

Yesterday, security software company AVG made available an update for the AVG 8 program that incorrectly identified an essential Windows file as a Trojan horse, CNET reports. Only impacting users of the Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, French and Dutch versions of Windows XP, the update suggested that users delete the Windows system file user32.dll version 5.1.2600.3099 (an important system file). ...