Goodbye XP

[tom95521]

I hate to see you go. In my opinion it was the first reliable Windows operating system. I have my VM I can boot when I want to relive the past.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_XP

Tom

[davegee]

Tom,

I reckon mine will last another ten years or so - no problem.

It has never been connected to the Internet - never updated and it's just as good as new.

DG

[Lin Evans]

I will keep Win XP on my development system - no reason to change. There have been recent issues and the hackers are now having a field day, but it's still my favorite OS for Windows.

Just two days ago I spent over 13 hours chasing a really annoying virus which I picked up following an Adobe lead. The Windows Security Essentials immediately flagged it and flashed a message which indicated that I need do nothing because it was handled by the program. Turns out it wasn't at all. Not only wasn't the problem "fixed" but subsequent use of the external Microsoft security program provided on the Microsoft site could find no problem. I ran AVG, Kaspersky, Malwarebytes, Super Anti-Spyware, and Ad-Aware. All found "some" problems and corrected, but none could find the culprit. What happened is that every few seconds a "rundll32.exe" file was added to the task manager. After a time there were over 150 instances of this file each sapping RAM. If I deleted one it was immediately replaced. I opened Windows in the Safe mode and looked everywhere but could not find the culprit. I searched the web for similar problems to no avail. Finally, I downloaded a freeware program called Process Explorer by Sysinternals. This program let me see what was linked with the complete path to each file being currently displayed in the Windows Task Manager. It also let me "suspend" as well as erase the action of any running program. I discovered a file in the Windows System 32 folder called "winthemes_services.dll" which was proliferating all the rundll32.exe clones. I went back to the Safe Mode, searched for the winthemes_services.dll file just to be sure it wasn't lurking somewhere else and deleted it from the Windows System 32 folder. Case closed. Thirteen hours of frustration and literally none of the current anti-virus/anti-threat software could recognize the culprit.

I guess these are the things we will have to suffer with in the future when we leave Win XP open to infection on the web..... Hopefully, even though Microsoft no longer supports XP the antivirus protections will still work when and if they find all the proliferation of threats we can soon expect for this OS...

Best regards,

Lin

[Ken Cox]

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-ca/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-ca/sysinternals

ken

[tom95521]

Just finished updating my main PC to Windows 8.1 (about 30 minutes to install). So far no problems and PTE runs great. These new haswell CPUs are fast.

Tom

[Lin Evans]

Hi Tom,

If you could, try outputting a native MacIntosh exe from your 8.1 system and see if it works properly on your Mac. I think Ron was having problems doing that for some reason a couple days ago..

Best regards,

Lin

[tom95521]

Hi Lin,

Just a quick test with music and a couple of slides from Windows 8.1 created on my Dell XPS8700 to Mac .zip file. Everything appears to work perfectly.

Macbook Pro 2010

Mavericks

Tom

[Lin Evans]

Thanks Tom, that's good news. I'll see if Ron has his issue solved yet... Later - here's the link, maybe you could make a suggestion?

http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums/index.php?/topic/16715-create-an-exe-file-for-mac-in-vmware-fusion/

Best regards,

Lin