Out with Windows XP Pro -in with Windows 7 Pro

I will still be using my off-line XP machine some. I am looking for suggestions on how to use a wireless home network to transfer files to my internet connected computer without exposing my now vulnerable XP computer to viruses. General ideas, anyone?

I used a 100 gb external hard drive. They're dirt cheap now and I just copy/pasted the the whole darn C drive in one shot. I copied the C drive copy onto the 1tb drive I use for my nightly backup. Put the 100gb in the firesafe for safekeeping.

Ah feel your pain!

I'm blocking my XP laptop's MAC address from connecting to my WiFi. But first I'm updating Kaspersky and doing a full scan then I will block it and disable the WiFi in the laptop. I'm not sure if there is a safe way to have it on the network locally. This is at home so file transfers are minimal anyway. I will just use a USB flash drive (thumb drive, gig stick, whatever you want to call it).

I also did the same recently, and you are right it is frustrating the amount of time it takes just to get back to what you had working before. I have a HP 350C DesignJet, installed a card on the tower with a parallel/serial port ($50 installed), and used a printer driver from Winline(cost $213), but the older plotter is now working. Windows 7 does not used ActiveSync to connect to my PocketPC Recon TDS Data Collector, but when I connected the recon to the new computer Windows Mobile Device Center automatically sync to the TDS Recon in Windows 7.

Good Luck, let us know what you find.

FUD. Fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) is a tactic used in sales, marketing, public relations,politics and propaganda.

"Because the one big thing you're not going to get is any more security updates for XP. You can hide it behind firewalls and everything else but if somebody spots an opportunity and a flaw in the XP operating system and writes something that gets into you — most of that will come in through the internet and emails," Illsley said.

"Antivirus will help but the real issue is with an unsupported OS is once someone spots a flaw, that's a weakness you're not going to have fixed unless you pay Microsoft a shed-load of money, and nobody's going to do that.

"If you've got a particular application that's got to run on XP, then it's how to ring-fence that device so that if it gets infected, it's not going to spread out to any others. Because that's the critical one."

Quicker and easier (safer?) to copy/move with a portable device... just do it and quit worrying.

Looks like I may be doing the same sort of thing. Company is about to buy Trimble Business Center. Turns out the new version does not run on XP, which is on the laptop I took to the training class. So I had to use an older version for the class, which brought on issues with commands and the toolbar working.

Got back to the office and tried to load the demo version on the desktop, which didn't work because the desktop was about 108 updates behind on Windows 7 Pro. It's on a network managed by an offsite company. So the support guy remotely logged on and got the updates installed, still wouldn't load. Desktop is 32 bit, Trimble says it will run on 32 but recommends 64. Really need a laptop that runs it anyway, so probably going to order one with a docking station, but will leave desktop alone for now.

I hate switching computers, but hate switching software even more.

> I am looking for suggestions on how to use a wireless home network to transfer files to my internet connected computer without exposing my now vulnerable XP computer to viruses.

If your LAN is behind a hardware firewall -- most wireless routers include one -- that hasn't been set up to allow promiscuous traffic, the XP machine probably isn't going to be exposed to any danger if all you're doing is file transfers to another machine on your LAN. The big risk comes from allowing the XP machine to connect to the Internet, which in most cases means via browser or email client.

I still have an XP laptop that I use for the rare occasions that I travel for work. I don't keep any mission-critical data on it, and I don't normally have it connected to my office LAN except for file transfers before and after a trip. I do connect to the Internet while traveling, but I go through my phone as a hotspot (cafe/hotel wireless is risky) and I stick with websites I know and trust.

More than once I've had every machine on a network infected because a virus got on one machine and spread through the network to the other machines. If I were writing computer gremlins you can bet that I'd be searching breached networks for XP machines to take control of.

If I had to keep an XP machine, it would be completely isolated from the internet and the local network. I would likely remove the network card to remove all doubt. Then any file transfers would be made by thumb drive with virus software on both machines set-up to scan all file types on removable media upon insertion. Not convenient or foolproof but relatively safe.

We still have a computer running windows 2000 that gets used almost daily. No problems with it. We don't use it to surf the web or check email.

I been doing the same thing. New HP Z230 entry level workstation, Win 7 Pro.

So far things going better than expected.

I got an old HP DesignJet 600 to work using a D-Link DP 301P+ print server (about $50). It makes the plotter a network type printer (on network through switch/router). I loaded the XP 64bit HP drivers onto the print server and it works. I have been doing this for a couple years with Win XP.

It's probably too late now, but I would have recommended that you move your email and files to the cloud before switching. I say that because if you are already moving stuff from one computer to another, why not move to a cloud situation? Future moves are then super-easy, not to mention life in general becomes much easier.

Why?

Moving email to the cloud (Google Apps for Business, $5/user/month or $50/user/year) means you can access it from any computer with the proper credentials. Sounds scary, right? Well, you could also use 2-step authentication, meaning that you don't just have a username and password -- you also have another form of verification like authorizing certain computers via SMS. If you have a domain, you can point your mail to Google's servers without affecting your website. If you have other email accounts, you can have Google login and pull those emails into your new Google email account.

Along with that Google Apps for Business account, you get 30GB of space on Google Drive. You can download a program that automatically synchronizes your hard drive files to Drive. Is 30GB not enough? Upgrade to 100GB for $1.99/month or 1TB for $9.99/month (gasp!). Anyway, now you simply move your Windows documents, pictures, etc. folders to point in their respective folders on Google Drive. Everything is now backed up in the cloud automatically. Also, now you can access your files from your phone, tablet, other computers, etc. from wherever you have an internet connection.

On top of all that, you get Google Apps, which is a good replacement for Microsoft Word, Excel, Powerpoint and more. When you convert your Office documents to Google's format, they don't count against your Drive quota.

I've been doing this stuff for awhile now, but recently just moved all my stuff to Drive. I love it. I can access it from anywhere and it's all backed up. A client recently asked me to do this for her as well -- she now will save a ton of money in software licensing fees. If her computer dies, she can simply buy a new one, login and authorize it with her Google stuff, and she's off to the races again. Very little to no hassle.

For the record: I have no skin in the game and I make no money referring people to Google. I'm just a very, very happy customer.

Cloud services have yet to earn my trust...

Given:

outages of cloud services (DropBox, Google)

shutdown of cloud services (Mega)

private scanning of data (Google, Yahoo)

government scanning of data (NSA)

I might use cloud for backup - but I would not be moving to it as my primary datasource

I find a external USB harddrive (or three) to be a better solution for me

And the big plus - it works in the field

Just my $0.02

Yeah, I understand the hesitation. However, with the plan I described, your data is on your hard drive AND in the cloud. If the service goes offline, you still have your files locally and they will be synchronized once the service is back up again. Of course, this wouldn't apply to email, though, but I can't recall an outage that was long enough to cause much panic (for me anyway). 🙂

The downside to a USB drive, IMHO, is that means your data and the backup of your data are in the same location much of the time. So if the office were to burn down (let's hope not), you'd potentially lose everything, including the backup.

I doubt that Google will be shutting down Drive anytime soon, especially since they just basically wiped out competition by offering amazing prices for way more space than anyone else for that type of service. Plus they would give you notice and you can go to Google Takeout to download all your stuff first (or any other time, for that matter). https://www.google.com/settings/takeout

As for the prying eyes thing, well, I just don't worry about it. There's nothing exciting in those files anyway.

I have NAS (Network Attached Storage). It is synced into the cloud. My NAS is Raid mirrored. I been using the NAS for my files. I just bought a new computer. I could move my work files onto it, have it auto backed to the NAS which is backed up to the cloud (automatically).

My cloud service has a feature where I can get to my files on my NAS over the internet. It's still got a bit to go but I can look at my file structure and load files on my smartphone anywhere I can get on the net.

So the cloud is taking over but I still, at least for now, want my primary storage to be on a box in my office or at least on my property.

Well, SHEEESH! Again! During the rains and a little down time, I continued to work on wirelessly networking my old XP computer with my win7 machine. I also ran into the permissions problems on win7, and worked through workgroup naming and file/printer sharing.
Thank goodness, I have finally completed being able to read and write files back and forth between the two computers that have two different operating systems. I plan to surf the net and send e-mails with my win7pro computer and still work (for now) primarily on the XP machine until I get proficient in the new versions of my software. I can now print to my three printers from both machines with physical connections on the win7pro machine. The only unfinished task is to reconnect my HP Designjet 430 back to my XP machine and get win7pro to plot to it. Hopefully, that won't be much of a hurdle considering all the button punching, reading, and foul language generated lately. :pissed:

Take a chill pill, Harold. Tomorrow is a new day! B-)

I have a wireless board in my XP machine, and I can enable/disable it when needed. I am behind a home firewall, and a long as I don't get on the net with my XP machine, or a least limit it to trusted sites and raise my security levels as high as they go, I should be ok.
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