Anybody noticed XP acting strange lately

Discussion in 'Windows XP General Discussion' started by Aunty Jack, Jan 31, 2015.

  1. Aunty Jack

    Aunty Jack

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    Hello from Aunty Jack,

    Now call me paranoid, call me a conspiracy theorist.

    Has anybody noticed their XP doing strange things in the last week. Taking forever to copy a small file to a USB/not changing from one folder to another as XP used to do/hanging on boot sometimes/doing odd and strange things out of character with XP.

    This is where I become off the planet paranoid. The only thing I allowed Microsoft to install in the last week was an update to .NETframework 2. .NETframework "talks" to the program that needs it. .NETframework does not "talk" to the OS.

    Has Microsoft slipped an end of life/XP fail/"bomb" in somewhere to force users to upgrade their OS. Would Microsoft do that. ?.

    The older Windows versions (I tested Win 95, Win 98, Win 2000, Win ME, and even the unreleased Windows Neptune) had no problems. Problems only with XP even after a clean re-install.

    Got to the stage where I am now using Win 7 Home Basic and loving it. Even with 1Gb RAM and an on-board graphics card Win 7 Home Basic works very well indeed. Now to find some $$$ for some old 1Gb RAM chips to suit my old clunker Dell GX270.

    So, call me nuts about these XP problems but they only started in the last week. Hmm. !

    Cheers from Aunty Jack.
     
    Last edited: Jan 31, 2015
    Aunty Jack, Jan 31, 2015
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  2. Aunty Jack

    Elizabeth23

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    I am going over to microsoft updates to see about that .net update, but I do not believe it would be booby trapped , will post an update afterwards.
     
    Elizabeth23, Jan 31, 2015
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  3. Aunty Jack

    OhNoNotAgain

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    I had problems copying form my HD to a thumb drive this morning.

    I was chalking it up to a new install not being fully updated.

    Now you have me wondering.

    XP would not recognize my thumb drive, I assigned a new letter to it, and it was recognized for a while.



    I so not like being dependent upon a computer and big companies. I will only escape when I either decide to go off the grid, or assume room temperature.
     
    OhNoNotAgain, Jan 31, 2015
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  4. Aunty Jack

    Elizabeth23

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    Aunty Jack I only had three optional updates, they were really old updates, for ie8,
    I did not bother to install them.

    knock on wood all is okay at this time :)

    ==
     
    Elizabeth23, Jan 31, 2015
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  5. Aunty Jack

    Elizabeth23

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    OhNoNotAgain, you should not be doing anything until you are fully updated.

    I just reinstalled two weeks ago, had my drivers, my applications, antivirus, browser, and about half my updates on a flash drive. I used autopatcher to get the updates in advance.

    after that I then went to windows updates from the start menu, lrt it install the active x component to bring it up to Microsoft updates, and got the rest of the updtea that autopatcher did not get.
     
    Elizabeth23, Jan 31, 2015
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  6. Aunty Jack

    eatup

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    I'm starting to like Win7 too (but only after a lot of tweaks) when I need to do work or be on the internet uploading/downloading stuff. Nothing beats old XP for media playback and games.

    I am also paranoid about MS slipping a timebomb somewhere to force XP users to upgrade. However, this morning, I managed to move some 80GB of stuff via thumb drive onto my system. Had to go back and forth between 2 x 8GB sticks, but copy went fine. This all done in XP btw.

    As for .NET, it is a crucial part of what I do on XP, so it gets installed the moment I reinstall the OS. To my kowledge, there has been no new NET framework updates for XP since EOL in April of last year.

    Lastly, i have a recent machine that triple boots XP/7/8.1. Since this system is eligible for the FREE W10 upgrade later this year, try as MS might, they will never pry XP away from this system. I will simply quadruple boot come the time to upgrade. XP stays on the computer and gets used very often until hardware EOL (ie. PC goes kaput)..
     
    Last edited: Jan 31, 2015
    eatup, Jan 31, 2015
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  7. Aunty Jack

    Jojo

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    My beef with W7 as with all updates for both M$ and others it they completely change the location of everything. It's like walking into a new kitchen every time you want to make a snack.

    I've noticed a number of problems developing with XP over the last few months, many pages taking a few moments longer to load for example. Recently this has also been happening to W7, but only since M$ announced that w10 would be a free upgrade.

    It seems pretty obvious what is going on.
     
    Jojo, Feb 4, 2015
    #7
  8. Aunty Jack

    Aunty Jack

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    Hello from Aunty Jack,

    My post some time ago about XP starting to give random failures and “glitches”.

    Since then I have started with the basics, is the hardware/motherboard/USB hubs/graphics card etc etc starting to fail. After all, the “muck about” PC I use is 11 years old.

    Using two hard disks (a hard disk change takes about less than a minute) I have done clean installs of:

    Windows 95
    Windows 98
    Windows 2000
    Windows ME
    XP Home and XP Professional
    Vista Home Basic
    Windows 7 Starter
    Windows 7 Home Basic
    Windows 7 Home Premium
    Xubuntu 14
    Lubuntu 14
    Ubuntu 10.04.2 LTS
    LinuxMint 12, 13, 17, 17.1
    Puppy Linux 528
    JoliCloud
    Bohdi Linux
    etc and so on.

    And with a RAW format of each hard disk format between changes of Operating System.

    Each Operating System worked without problem or failure of hardware or peripherals with the exception of XP Home and XP Professional.

    (from XP up to Windows 7 all updates were downloaded and installed)

    The whole testing process took several days.

    With XP the troubles start with copy/paste or cut/past either between folders of to/from USB. The system hangs for a while the either will or will not copy/paste.

    Random “lock-up's” with known software. VLC, Open Office, tried and trusted programs.

    Never saw a BSOD though. Failure to recognise Ctl/AltDel to close a running program.

    Entire system “lock”. Only way to get going again was pull the power plug and start again and run Scan Disk.

    The occasional update, (for XP) mainly Microsoft Malicious Software Removal came through. The problems with XP started two, maybe three weeks ago with a Malicious Software Removal update. Hmmmm.

    So, I am fairly sure the hardware is ok. All other Operating Systems did as they should except XP.

    Unfortunately I have had to leave XP in the parts bin (and on a spare hard disk) and now have Windows 7 Home Premium as my Operating System of choice. Yes, Win 7 Home Premium does work very well indeed on old hardware and limited RAM after a few standard, “tweaks”.

    Anyway, this is my XP experience so far and it is sad to see such a fine Operating System either showing it's age or, dare I say it, being slowly killed by it's maker.

    Cheers from Aunty Jack.
     
    Aunty Jack, Feb 13, 2015
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  9. Aunty Jack

    eatup

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    I'm a little paranoid, but I'm pretty sure this is the problem. I don't remember it fully, but the last time I ran it, my Media Player Classic acted like it had been patched. Is it supposed to do that? Patch a competitor's software instead of just plain remove malware?

    From that moment on, it seemed to me this "malicious software remover" was something like a gift trojan horse. It seemed like a good idea to have it run amok from within your system... As part of the name, the only "malicious" thing about Media Player Classic was that it was a direct competitor to Windows Media Player, and a good one at that.
     
    eatup, Feb 13, 2015
    #9
  10. Aunty Jack

    Samwise

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    Windows XP backups with Macrium Reflect

    This thread is very interesting to me, because I came to these forums to post sth strange I noticed with Windows XP today.

    I've been running Windows XP with SP3 for a long time, I guess now well past that April deadline we had last year. Since then, I have been avoiding any web browsing, and have been only hooking up my PC online to get Windows updates and to update my MalwareBytes and get Kaspersky AV updates.

    Although, I have occasionally indulged in Silverlight's Netflix, the only website I have accessed since the April end of support deadline, using Firefox, because it is supposed to be a secure website.

    I have also been using Macrium Reflect to keep backing up my system drive, which has been working fine, and was always resulting in a less than 20 GB image file, which I can use to restore Windows XP, if there are any problems.

    I have been saving my Macrium Reflect backups onto an external drive, but I'm running out of room in my external drive, so I decided to back it up onto a big 64 GB jump drive. That's when I noticed that Macrium Reflect split up my backup into several 4 GB image files, instead of one huge image file that can be restored easily.

    So, now I'm not sure why that happened, and if that is going to make it hard for me to restore that backup, if I run into any problems like malware. I wanted to have a good backup of my Win XP system drive, before I go back online again for more AV and Windows updates, which is making me increasingly nervous, because of so many potential security leaks and backdoors in Windows XP, these days.

    Now that I'm using Windows 7 on my new PC, I only need my old PC running Windows XP for photography, printing and games. I'm hoping to eventually do all that stuff with Windows 7 on my new PC, but Windows XP does that stuff so well and so fast, and I've spent most of the last year customizing my Windows XP OS on my Pavilion PC, that it's hard to abandon it.
     
    Samwise, Feb 15, 2015
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  11. Aunty Jack

    eatup

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    That is not how you use Windows XP. You use it just like a regular OS connected to the internet when logged on. In the past I've ran XP for months at a time online without resorting to installing the hotfixes (when they were still being made) without problems!

    I'd be hard-pressed to find out there are still major security holes in XP left after what 12 years worth of patching? To me XP is the safest OS out of XP/7/8.1 b/c it had been "fixed" for the longest of time...

    Anyways, the reason why Macrium split the backup image into 4GB parts is b/c of the nature of the file system on flash drives (ie. it can hold only a certain max file size), whereas on a regular hard drive, there is no such restriction (or the file size limit is much higher).
     
    eatup, Feb 15, 2015
    #11
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