Re: OT: Fwd: Windows Update changes

Absolutely. BUT make damn sure that all update options are "set" to "NO WAY IN HELL".

And then constantly complain that nothing works right.

-- Subject: Spelling Lesson

The last four letters in American.........I Can The last four letters in Republican.......I Can The last four letters in Democrats.........Rats

End of lesson. Test to follow in November, 2016

Remember, November is to be set aside as rodent extermination month.

There are (were) 100+ security related updates to XP/sp3. And, even one released *after* MS absolutely, positively, never-again STOPPED supporting it.

As for what "doesn't work", have you ever hammered on an SMB share using XP? Notice anything??

REALLY? I use Win2K and locked out updates day one at installation day one. First i have heard (or seen) that "nothing works right". Use XP SP3 on occasion as well; ditto. Also use Win7 and Win7 SP1 (which required about 22 updates to get the SP1 to work after its second install). Have both of them locked down. Tell me what is not working..

In my non-existent spare time, I help maintain a network of weather stations. When I inherited the system about 10 years ago, everything was running on Windoze 2000. Over the years, various libraries used to run Windoze programs were updated by Microsoft. Eventually, support for Windoze 2000 went away, and we were forced to update to XP and later to Win 7 in order stay in sync with these libraries. Specifically, Windoze 2000 does not support .NET 4 and 4.5. Oops. Win2K isn't even listed. As I recall, the last version that worked on Win2K desktop was .NET 3.0 and on server was .NET 2.0.

If you live in a closed environment, write your own software, have simple computing requirements, use old printers, and don't use anything from developers that keep up to date with the latest libraries, you're probably ok. If you're going to run an OS with known vulnerabilities, a good firewall is also handy.

No, it means the script kiddies have already cataloged all of the exploits they can use against you and are just waiting to stumble across you!

You *do* know that every time you go to a web site, send mail, etc. your computer tells the world what version of which program you are using along with the OS that is hosting it? So, they can tailor their response (attack) to that, exactly.

• Nope! Nothing is shared..

• The problem was that you allowed bastard updates from Micro$uck. If you had left those libraries, etc alone, you would not need the .NET bloat and so an OS change. I know some businesses that exclusively use DOS and have never had to look back on the decision. In fact, those businesses have run since the mid-80s with zero down time (not counting power shortages), and "competing" businesses (ie: in same field of business) continually have problems and "need" to "upgrade" and $pend thousands of dollars running up their part of Alice's hill. Doing almost exactly the same thing with the data.

Nice ting about Win2K, is that it is so old that it is below contempt and malware..

Nope. That's not the way it works. The applications programs purchased by my customer require some version of .NET. If the required version is later than what W2K will support, then the program will not run. The choice is then to run on old version of the applications program with an old version of .NET, or upgrade to a later version of Windoze.

Is this somehow related to you running Windoze 2000 or have we diverted to a different topic?

I know of one like that. I was keeping their DOS based cash registers running well past when their software vendor proclaimed that it was "unsupported". The company grew and hired a manager that demanded the latest version of Windoze on everything (apparently so she could run Facebook all day). Also, all new machines. The DOS program no longer worked well under Windoze, so they upgrade to the latest version offered, which turned out to be highly buggy and slow. After about 9 months of swearing at the system, they finally got it working correctly. When I told them that they would have been better off running the old DOS system, the new manager effectively fired me. Hopefully, your businesses that exclusively use DOS are doing better.

Not exactly. There were some problems converting the payroll reports to the latest forms required by the government. Getting the tax accountant to punch in the numbers instead of importing them from a file was difficult. There were also a few Y2K bugs left in the mix. DOS worked, but not smoothly.

Yep. Security by obscurity is such a wonder method.

Here's your things to do list for W2K: That's 91 vulnerabilities left unpatched even with the latest patches.

A few might, but finding a W2K machine on the internet is going to be difficult. Looks like it has already fallen off the charts:

Yep. Just one click away (top of the page): More detail:

When I had Win2K there was a virus going around that would infect your machine without it doing anything other than being connected to the Internet. The virus running on other machines would sniff around until it found another vulnerable PC and infect it. The fix was to install the Windows update. I had to reformat the hard drive of my friend's machine three times because the work would take some 30-40 minutes and then I would space out and forget to install the update before going online, lol.

I'm pretty sure this virus would get in past a virus checker, not sure if a firewall would stop it or not. But it was always there to infect you because there were so many machines already infected. It's probably not around so much anymore.

Even Windows 3.1 has more market share than 2K. Funny!