Windows XP, the venerable and trusty Windows operating system from Microsoft is still in use around the world. Despite the fact that Munich has switched their computers to the Linux operating system, Windows XP still has a foothold. My local library still runs Windows XP Professional SP3. This is dated 2002 and is obviously quite dated by now. It is about time that all users of Windows XP upgraded to a better operating system. Surely they could investigate a better alternative. They are not even using Windows Defender or any other anti-virus that I could see upon casual inspection of the running system tray icons. Only the red shield icon that indicated serious problems with the security of the system as shown in the screenshot above. Upgrading to Windows 8.1 or a Linux operating system would help improve security. Windows 7 is still supported until 2020; that is not a bad operating system, the only problem is that you have to install a massive amount of updates after installation. If the computers are on an Active Directory domain; which I am not sure of, then they could be upgraded using PXE boot and rolling out a new image that would install on all computers taking advantage of multicast. That would manage network traffic when sending packets of data to and fro over the network. This is easily setup using Windows Server 2012 and is the best way to update the software on a running computer.
I have done this with 2012 and it is not too difficult. PXE boot must be enabled on all running computers obviously, then the automated rollout and update may be done. But you must first test the image on one or two computers first. The installation will copy all files to the computer during the Windows installation, but it may then fail afterwards. This is why you need to develop the image on a computer identical to the target machine. This prevents unknown errors during the rollout. This could certainly be used to upgrade all of the library computers. This could be done on a Sunday when there is none using the library. This would be an interesting case study in terms of holding on to outdated software. The browser they use is still Internet Explorer 8.0. That is seriously outdated. I installed Windows XP Professional in a KVM virtual machine and I was able to install Firefox 29. And install updates, but only the backlog of updates is available. No more updates are available for Windows XP after the April date. But you can at least use XP in a VM and get the most recent updates. No one uses Internet Explorer 6.0 I hope. That is consigned to the past; except for some retarded corporations that still use outdated ActiveX applications. But I have tried to get that working with IE 11 and it is a nightmare. It will not work. Which is the point. That is why you have to really try to run *.HTA scripts now.
The Windows XP VM I am running cannot use Anti-Virus as Microsoft Security Essentials cannot be installed any more. This is another blow for the old Windows operating system. Better to use Linux Mint or Fedora. They offer far more security.
Comprehensive opinions, Thanks.