And if you do have such a use for XP, then step 1 is making sure the computer is not used by regular users for anything other than it's intended purpose (ie no general browsing of the web on it). Unless you have some sort of mission critical software or application that cannot be migrated to a more modern OS, or would cost significant amounts of money, there is simply no reason to remain on XP. Would an alarm system (anti virus) keep them out? Quite possibly, but unlocking the door gets them one step closer to your stuff, and alarms are known to fail from time to time or can be circumvented. Is there a possibility that they will not only work out which house the key goes to, but then use it to steal all your stuff when you aren't there? Absolutely, though not very likely. XP is about as secure as your house is after you have thrown the key. Take the key to your front door, and just sort of toss it in a random direction from the end of your driveway. With good security policies you can keep machines relatively safe for a while but at some point you will probably have to moth ball them. The problems you may face are perhaps a year or two down the line when drivers become outdated & unsupported.
If the machines are sitting behind a decent proxy/firewall, with local updating virus scanning and avoid using older versions of IE I think you should be relatively safe for a while.
Microsoft ccleaner windows xp install#
Maybe in your build install another default web browser that will still receive patches e.g chrome or firefox and enable this as the default browser reducing the risk of running older versions of IE by default. Once you have a master image you can rebuild the other machines when you need.įrom there, I would suggest an up to date virus scan engine & possibly some default local security policies to avoid applications installing in default locations e.g. If you plan to the keep the XP machines, I would suggest creating a build image with all the updates available as soon as possible.