Each to their own. But, if you install both SP1 and 2, in my experience, Vista runs almost as well as Windows 7.
Thanks...I won't be trying Vista on my current set-up. I won't risk upsetting the apple cart! I'll wait until I can get a new custom build, with the latest Windows build.
I've never understood why Vista should require so much more hard drive space than XP. A basic install image created with Macrium or Paragon is about 1.45 GB for XP SP-2, no pagefile, and with some third-party software such as Firefox, CCleaner, Glary Utilities, Imgburn, 7-Zip, Sandboxie, plus a few more applications. A comparable image for Vista with SP-1 is over 12 GB. Actually, I would use Windows 2000 SP-4 more often but some driver and software compatibility issues make XP a better option for me.
Yes, still use it, have win 7, win 8, I just like win xp best. This security setup has worked flawlessly for 7 or 8 years, and survived several "hits". I have narrowed it down over the years, it used to be a much longer list. Avast free + infrequent checks with AVZ and MBAM. SpywareBlaster SpywareGuard Sandboxie Always portable browsers, always running sandboxed Powershadow v. 2.6 free Powershadow is the main defense here. Because windows leaves so many leftovers in both visible and hidden folders. Also because in my "tinkering", I too leave lots of junk. Powershadow gets rid of it all with just a restart, no time added. Sadly, Powershadow is not available after win xp.
7 is like an optimized version of Vista. I never thought I would ever use Vista but I got a second hand Vista laptop by chance that had a recovery partition. I restored it and applied service packs 1 and 2 and applied all the newer updates which took a couple of days to fully complete. After disabling a few services like superfetch, it performed nicely and that laptop is still in use. I tried 7 on that laptop and found I preferred Vista. I have machines that 7 works much better on but this one has a low end gpu that chokes 7. Vista--in classic mode--runs like a charm. Aero worked but after a while I found it visually distracting and now use classic theme and start menu to make Vista look almost like Xp. The one annoying flaw of both Vista and 7 is the unstable explorer shell. I find it hanging for 30 seconds to a minute sometimes when I open a new folder or drive and it starts making thumbnails. Vista is worse in this regard but only by a little. Windows 7 doesn't hang as much but I get frequent "Windows explorer has stopped working" crashes instead. At least it is just explorer and not the whole system. I could prevent all this and make both systems more stable by disabling the default preview view of files and folders and just display icons but I like this feature and find it useful. Xp has none of these explorer issues even when I enable thumbnail view. At some point or another, I've used every version of Windows since 3.0. In that long thread, the first one I really liked was NT4.0. Compared to the consumer 95 and 98 of that era, it was fast and stable. When I started using 2000 and then XP I still kept using NT4.0 and finally gave it up due to the lack of USB support and other hardware issues. I feel the same way about XP. As long as it continues to function with the hardware I want it to function with, I will continue to use it.
Keep Avast, and dump all the rest of that extra baggage in lieu of DefenseWall and Shadow Defender. SD offers a life time license and is arguably the very best for light virtualization. For a 32-bit OS, DW will cover the same ground and offer superior seamless system wide protection than all of the other listed apps combined.
Haven't used it since 2008. Went 64 bit Vista, then 7, then 8, then 8.1 and haven't missed XP one bit. I do miss 7 occasionally. 8.1 has been more reliable.
SB, Is DefenseWall pretty much the same kind of app as Shadow Defender? If not, how do they differ as to how they protect a system from malware? Thanks, Cruise ------ Ps. If this is OT too much, please reply by PM.
I multiboot 16 XP partitions on 4 hard drives and they work find. When browsing I use SandboxIE. My 8.1 laptop occasionally does not boot up right and my old XP machine is used to ferret out the problem with info online and is thus indispensable.
Thanks for those recommendations, Stillborn. Sounds like a good setup for me and the op to consider. I'm checking it out now.
This. XP is nice, I go back and use from time to time. But you can tell the difference between the two. Especially when unzipping files and things of that sort, W7 is a lot faster than XP. Plus you can use more ram in 7.
I used Vista for 3 years and never had a single issue. It was stable, all updates installed flawlessly and every program worked fine (more than I can say about 7 where I often find glitches with installed software). Also I still consider it the most visually attractive OS I've used or seen; upgrading from XP was a feast and I never looked back.
While I have seen some major performance issues with some machines running Vista without any service packs installed, once both service packs were installed Vista ran fine, just like it did for you. I wouldn't say I had the same issues with Windows 7 as you did, but I consider Windows 7 to be a fairly minor improvement over Vista, and I really miss the network activity indicator (although there are 3rd party ones available for Windows 7).
There are two things I really miss about XP. The ability to do a repair install when you boot from your Windows CD. This came in handy when you had serious boot issues, e.g. BSODs as it could often fix them. The Startup Repair in Vista and later versions of Windows is very limited as to what it can fix. You could reinstall service packs. A good way of fixing Windows problems was to reinstall a service pack. In later versions of Windows you can't do this.
@Cruise This is a tidy (and hence, an admittedly "lazy") reply. SD is a light virtualization program that offers the ability to undo any and all changes to the registry, files, and MBR that have occurred while in shadow mode by rebooting the system. From a purely conceptual point of view, Defensewall is way more similar to Sandboxie except the protection is on a system wide basis. Of course, with a lot of tweaking SB can be configured to cover as much ground as DW does out of the box. Although, if I recall correctly, SB has deleting advantages (as in emptying the sandbox) that Defensewall does not. As a layered approach goes; consider DW as the equivalent to a system wide SB without the necessary tweaking, and a decent AV/AM app to remove anything may have slipped past DW. Shadow Defender would be the icing on the cake in case someone else per chance sat at your keyboard and decided to get click happy with downloads or surf the shadier side of the web. If you find this teeny weeny bit of info (and I use the term loosely) of any interest, I would strongly encourage you to dig around this forum for "pegr's" postings respective to all of the aforementioned apps. For sure, my postings in general can only aspire to be as eloquent, persuasive, and substantive as his are.
Yeppers. I'm surprised at the answers as to why people are still on it though. I thought the first 2 reasons would be the main ones. I guess privacy/anonymity could be considered an "other" reason that compel some too.
My feeling is that a big advantage of XP and earlier is the ability to modify pretty much to your liking- provided you have the skill and understanding of any risk and are willing to accept that risk. With the introduction of Vista, the process of registry hacking and the overall "free-flow" usability has become more restrictive (UAC and additional or elevated permissions required to effect registry modification are two examples) as well as the troubling reality that the built-in capability for data mining/tracking becomes more sophisticated and invasive with each release from Redmond. Certainly, opinions differ, but I feel that each successive OS release from Microsoft has further limited the user to some degree, invaded privacy, limited software choices, and placed restrictions on hardware as well. Progress is inevitable, but is this really progress ? For many, these restrictions- new rules if you will- are an anathema to those who value their privacy, are used to the feeling of ownership in their system, and value the freedom to customize without imposed unnecessary restrictions. Yes, XP can and has been compromised and will continue to be compromised. So will Windows 10. ANY operating system can be compromised, so the concept of switching to Windows 8.1 or 10 due to security concerns is a bogus argument. Microsoft will continue to issue patches and hotfixes, service packs and other "upgrades" but outside hackers will find ways to bypass them. They always have. Switching to a new operating system should be about user experience and real-world need. Windows 8/8.1 satisfied neither, and I'm not sure that Windows 10 isn't anything more than Windows 8.1 with a start menu and a greater ability to track user activity. This is why I and many, many others continue to stay with XP.
+1 pegr is the guy who deeply understand and can explain those things quite well! You can also PM him if you still have question which you couldn't find answer in past posts as Wilders search function is quite limited IMO. IMO, there're surely some progress but at the same time even more craps and bloat. As to privacy invasion, it came to boader for me on Win8 where it requires user registration. I expect Windows dominant will reduce gradually and many people will go to other OS including those new OSes like ChromeOS. As to restriction, if you meant UAC and stricter ACLs, I don't think they are unnecessary or useless. They surely increase security and I don't feel inconvenience for just entering admin password or modifying ACE. But maybe you mean more restriction than them. Tho that is true, if they didn't made improvements and didn't impose restrictions there must be many more infection and much more damage. Current exploit techniques are much more evolved than XP era and not as much reliable, it means criminals are challenged and had to spend quite an effort to overcome them. There's no reason they should stop this cat-and-mouse game. I do not mention much about Microsoft's flawed and deceptive showing of statistics to make it look like 8 have much less infection than XP (needless to say, when new OS appears there must be much fewer infection. See subsequent stats and you'll find MS' claim was false.), and always weakest link in security chain is human. But there's no reason to deny their effort to make OS securer, it's another thing with bloat and privacy invasion. I have to say those security enhancements are what you says real-world need.
The operating systems all look good against infections when they're new to the attackers. When XP was new, they made very similar comparisons to the 9X systems. How much more secure did XP prove to be? XP made botnets possible and rootkits into an everyday term. It had so many flaws, they had to create "patch day". The newer NT systems made a router or hardware firewall a necessity. Without one, open ports are exposed. IMO, Microsoft has a very twisted definition of secure.
"Yes, because of another reason (please reveal in post)" I don't own that computer, but my brother has Win XP for Gaming, and it's more a money issue, nothing against newer OS. I also play games a lot with XP when i visit there. I have said that he can not use it with shopping or internet banking, just to be safe. ubuntu is for that. i also said to him that he must find new computer before April 2016, nothing major will not happen after that, but it's a day when Emsisoft will drop XP support. and i think it's a good idea to finally move on when official support have expired 2 years.
Well voted this: No, other (please reveal in post) I use Linux and this option: "No, I switched from Windows XP to Linux" does not apply either. I've been using Linux a long before Windows XP came about. Before VirtualBox I would dual boot when Windows was needed. Now I just fire it up in a virtual machine. I now use Windows 7 when the need arises. which is only a few times a year. I still have a Windows XP virtual machine. Last time I used it was February 26, 2015. Probably to test something. I am also trialling Windows 10 Technical Preview in a virtual machine and like what I see for the most part.
IIRC Windows XP with SP1 had the Internet Connection Firewall (ICF) turned off.(default) How dumb was that? Service Pack 2 (SP2) firewall changes were made/added and it was enabled by default, however it was still lacking outbound connection monitoring. Also from what I've read when starting Windows XP (no service packs or SP1) there is a delay between when the computer is active on the network and when the connections are protected with ICF. This delay makes it possible for the computer to be attacked by unsolicited traffic during startup. Adding router/3rd-party firewall to beef up security is good idea.
I find it difficult to consider Windows firewall as a security improvement. They took something that had been available for years (software firewalls), dumbed it down, and implemented half of it. It wouldn't have been necessary at all if they hadn't opened so many ports by default. One would have thought that Slammer would have shown them just how bad of an idea that was, but no. The newest versions have more than double the open ports and the user can't close them. On the new versions of Windows, they are necessary. They partially make up for their leaving so many ports open to start with. A very twisted definition of security. Leave the door open and make the user rely on a separate device to block access to them, devices that have been found to be just as vulnerable.
