Windows XP is a ticking time-bomb with only 500 days to go

I ran an Acronis backup for my father on his ancient XP desktop recently...and I couldn't believe how slow it was. I realize that was mostly due to hardware, though....this desktop had less RAM than my smartphone or tablet!

It's no wonder that he uses his Windows 7 laptop 95% of the time....

gregrocker said:

The Acronis services alone may slow an already strained low-resource system. What's always best to do there is run a completely clean boot except for MSE since freeloaders can't be afforded.

If you set the two Acronis Services to Manual or disable them in msconfig, you'll have to remember to turn them back on in Services.msc when running Acronis.

The system is definitely strained....one example, he had an additional AV (I don't recall which one off the top of my head) running alongside MSE (which I had installed for him previously) but when I explained that he shouldn't have two of them running concurrently, and did he want me to remove the second one, he hemmed and hawed and said, "maybe another day, I just want to get the backup made".

gregrocker said:

Just tell him that running two AV's is not advisable, while uninstalling the other one.

My Dad has finally gotten past asking if his PC can blow up.

I'm definitely going to bring it back up with him. I'm sure that he'll probably replace the old desktop before XP is finally unsupported, but I'd like to make the thing a little more usable for him until that point.

x BlueRobot said:

It seems the legacy of Windows XP is going to end in 500 days; if people haven't even migrated to Windows 7 yet, then why is Microsoft making such a big push with Windows 8?

I don't think Microsoft is worried, most xp systems are around 10+ years old that were originally bought with xp. Watch Microsoft will say win 8 was a success because all the old xp machines will break down at some point and most ppl will buy a pc from the store that comes with win 8 preinstalled which will boost win 8 sales. They pretty much have the market in their hands regardless of situation, only real competition is apple but their computers cost twice as much and most ppl will not want to try Linux since it takes more of learning curve so Microsoft wins anyways.