Windows Xp Support

How long will BitDefender Antivirus Plus 2013 be supported on Windows XP SP3?

According to the latest news coming out of Redmond, Washington, Windows XP will not have any more updates after 8-April-2014. And this applies to MS Security Essentials running on Windows XP SP3.

_______________________

Have a nice day

Amardeep

Find more posts tagged with

Comments

daman1

Why are you still using XP if I may ask?

x2..

Rohugh

Bitdefender Press Center - news re Windows XP support.

daman1

interesting read thanks.

addverma

They haven't release any announcement yet. But I would prepare myself for the worst. Why are you still using XP if I may ask?

Two reasons, one the work that I do does not require a newer version of computer hardware or a newer version of windows OS. My workload is light and so is my family's.

Secondly my laptop is over 7 years old and it would not support windows 7 or 8/8.1.

Due to this I do not plan on buying a new laptop for another 2 years, if my laptop can take it. Worst comes to worst I will switch over to Debian wheezy with Xfce or LXDE. Currently I am evaluating it on a USB stick to see how it goes.

The only thing stopping me is the fact that my tablet will not be compatible with Linux. But with Bit Defender antivirus support I think I will be able to run Windows XP for at least 2 years.

Drewie

Two reasons, one the work that I do does not require a newer version of computer hardware or a newer version of windows OS. My workload is light and so is my family's.

Secondly my laptop is over 7 years old and it would not support windows 7 or 8/8.1.

Due to this I do not plan on buying a new laptop for another 2 years, if my laptop can take it. Worst comes to worst I will switch over to Debian wheezy with Xfce or LXDE. Currently I am evaluating it on a USB stick to see how it goes.

The only thing stopping me is the fact that my tablet will not be compatible with Linux. But with Bit Defender antivirus support I think I will be able to run Windows XP for at least 2 years.

I am in the same position, we have an XP machine that only gets used for light home duties and emails, the wife does use it to pay bills and it is the only machine she is comfortable with. The PC is in perfect working order and I don't see the need to dump it just because Microsoft will no longer support it, also I am really not in a postion to go and update the PC at the moment there are more important things I need to spend money on. I have Bitdefender Antivirus Plus 2013 on the machine can I be confident the machine will be safe to use for banking etc once Microsoft end their support? Appreciate your thoughts.

Captain Obvious

I am in the same position, we have an XP machine that only gets used for light home duties and emails, the wife does use it to pay bills and it is the only machine she is comfortable with. The PC is in perfect working order and I don't see the need to dump it just because Microsoft will no longer support it, also I am really not in a position to go and update the PC at the moment there are more important things I need to spend money on. I have Bitdefender Antivirus Plus 2013 on the machine can I be confident the machine will be safe to use for banking etc once Microsoft end their support? Appreciate your thoughts.

Well, that depends. No antivirus software in existence can protect you from OS security weakness exploitation. That has to be patched by Microsoft themselves. Here's another good article about that very thing:

http://news.yahoo.com/taste-horrible-thing...-195030672.html

Honestly, your main concern will be email attachments. See, as long as you stick to safe websites (e.g. YouTube, Yahoo, www.microsoft.com, etc. You know, big name websites that can afford multi-million dollar server security) you should be fine. Just don't go looking at pr0n or scouring The Pirate Bay....or visiting Christian websites, and you should be fine as far as getting viruses on the internet go.

Now, back to my original point, that leaves email attachments as your main concern. The is especially true if you POP your emails instead of viewing them on the server from a web browser (E.G. From Yahoo or Google's web mail client). Because you are downloading those emails directly to your computer, emails that have malware attachments are also downloaded directly to your computer. So it is pretty self evident the type of threats that those types of emails pose.

I know because I've personally have gone through heck with infections from emails. That's why I no longer POP anything. My email client is Yahoo Mail, and I'm pretty darn safe as long as I don't actually download anything from the Yahoo Mail client.

BitdefenderAddict

Two reasons, one the work that I do does not require a newer version of computer hardware or a newer version of windows OS. My workload is light and so is my family's.

Secondly my laptop is over 7 years old and it would not support windows 7 or 8/8.1.

Due to this I do not plan on buying a new laptop for another 2 years, if my laptop can take it. Worst comes to worst I will switch over to Debian wheezy with Xfce or LXDE. Currently I am evaluating it on a USB stick to see how it goes.

The only thing stopping me is the fact that my tablet will not be compatible with Linux. But with Bit Defender antivirus support I think I will be able to run Windows XP for at least 2 years.

Check out LinuxMint - much more Windows like and all the goodies pre-installed. It's also based on Debian/Ubuntu.

Under no circumstances would I continue with XP if you plan to surf the internet with that machine. If it's off the grid, then you're fine.

addverma

Check out LinuxMint - much more Windows like and all the goodies pre-installed. It's also based on Debian/Ubuntu.

Under no circumstances would I continue with XP if you plan to surf the internet with that machine. If it's off the grid, then you're fine.

I will definitely try out Linux mint. But I am intrigued by what you said. I do not plan to open any attachments from trusted sources. I do not plan on giving any administrative or backup or power user privileges to any of my XP user accounts. I plan to install Comodo firewall on my computer. Also regular backups are also part of routine. I use chrome for normal surfing and dragon browser when I plan to go looking for torrent download.

Why would surfing the internet be a problem?

BitdefenderAddict

TL;DR - A modern OS that is actively managed at least has a fighting chance against hacks. An old OS with no maintenance is a sitting duck. If you insist on using XP, at least surf the web by booting into Linux on a USB drive.

Why would surfing the internet be a problem?

Well, let's key off this statement:

"I do not plan on giving any administrative or backup or power user privileges to any of my XP user accounts."

Example: a user (without any administrative privileges) downloads a pretty wallpaper image. What they don't know is there's a flaw in the OS. A badly formed jpeg images causes a memory leak. This leak can be used to then bypass this 'secure' account and run as root. Bingo, you're now a spam bot (or worse something highly illegal).

AND YOU WON'T EVEN NOTICE.

Except the usual "Hmm, my system seems slower and the hard drive thrashes all the time..."

This is what a 'hack' is. Unpatched flaws in the OS allowing privilege escalation. The difference is that at least (you hope) the manufacturer is actively fixing security breaches and making the fixes available before the hack spreads fully into the wild. You also hope that your anti-virus/anti-malware is robust enough to also identify and secure against this new attack vector.

When you use XP after the cutoff, you lose that. It's a sitting duck. And I can guarantee (FOR FREE!) that within 30 days of the end of support some big massive hole will be discovered.

They're already warning terminal users using embedded XP to get off it: http://www.infoworld.com/d/security/window...etailers-235608

And a 'modern' browser - while certainly helpful - isn't really relevant either. They can ALL be hacked. And surfing itself isn't safe, a while ago it was discovered that hackers had infiltrated Banner Ad networks and were attacking that way. It's a constant battle.

At a minimum you should use NoScript to block JavaScript execution. A painful way to surf the web, but it's better than having your machine hacked to serve illegal movies (or worse).

addverma

Well, let's key off this statement:

"I do not plan on giving any administrative or backup or power user privileges to any of my XP user accounts."

Example: a user (without any administrative privileges) downloads a pretty wallpaper image. What they don't know is there's a flaw in the OS. A badly formed jpeg images causes a memory leak. This leak can be used to then bypass this 'secure' account and run as root. Bingo, you're now a spam bot (or worse something highly illegal).

AND YOU WON'T EVEN NOTICE.

Except the usual "Hmm, my system seems slower and the hard drive thrashes all the time..."

I comprehend what you are saying. I am in the same boat as Drewie is. Let us see how it goes. If it gets too much scary I will dual boot with Linux and prevent any network activity using my Windows XP OS.