Why don't browsers and antivirus companies realise not everyone can afford windows 7 pcs?

Question

I have a pc which is windows XP service pack 1, Firefox demanded I upgraded to their latest version 9.0.1 , I have been trying to read my yahoo email since 10am this morning, it will not let me it keeps crashing, this is supposed to be their most secure browser, the trouble is they expect everyone to have a windows 7 pc, people who are out of work cannot afford to do that, so have to put up with old machines, opera was the same after it upgraded, I can only use I.E.6. because its only pentium 2, and the only virus scanner at the time was avast 4.8, they keep saying they do not support 4.8 anymore because they keep sending an annoying pop up which they refuse to stop sending, no pop up stopper will stop this annoying pop up, they say I have to upgrade, on their pop up it says the new anti-virus will not work on windows 95,98, ME, and NT so they know full well it will not work on a xp service pack 1 as it is on a NT Platform, so they try and update sometimes it will sometimes it wont, if messenger and one word document is open like it was this morning, it did not update not enough storage it said, there is over 30gb of hard drive space available, so then when you try to open a page it stops responding you look at the avast blue ball and it has a x on it avast had stopped, their new anti-virus I had on a service pack 3 machine that was stopped has avast had closed down, during the time it did that it let virus and infections in, I had to completely backup what I wanted off the hard drive onto an eternal hard drive, and completely reformat and reinstall which I had to do twice as the first time it did not do, it takes an hour to format and an hour to re-install, so that was 4 hours of my time I had to use because a so called anti-virus protector closed down, it is time something was done about these companies and that they realised people out there still use old machines

Answer 1

There's not many programs that *don't* support XP SP3.

I have an XP SP3 rig with Firefox 9.01 and Avast Free v6 running fine and dandy.



Your biggest security program is running SP1 when you should have SP3.



Also, you need to use a period (.) once in a while.

Answer 2

You can download ccleaner for free here: http://bit.ly/1Bk5V5C



First open CCleaner

Go to the Cleaner tab and you will be confronted by a very confusing lineup of checkboxes.

To make this brief, below is my recommended setup:

Under internet explorer check temporary internet files, cookies, and last download location. Most users don't really need this stuff. keep history and bookmarks unchecked, history is a maybe, but you don't want to lose bookmarked sites. You can normally leave Windows Explorer, System, and Advanced alone.

Run CCleaner and it will start deleting files.

afterward it will present you with a list of the files deleted, you really don't need to go through it as it will be several pages long.

The registry cleaner is recommended for slightly more advanced users. Use it after uninstalling programs as they will often leave behind incorrect registry entries.

If you decide to run Registry cleaner then review the items detected and always back up the registry (I keep a folder aside for this)

The Tools tab lets you uninstall programs and set startup programs. Why do you need this if Windows has all of these features? Especially with Vista Home Ed. The windows defender software explorer( startup programs) doesn't pick up some entries (however software explorer is easier to use).

Using CCleaner to uninstall programs and then check for leftover registry entries takes less time.

Under Options you can determine how CCleaner cleans your files. I leave this alone.

Answer 3

As an alternative, you might want to consider some flavor of Linux.

First: it's free.

And it has low-resource demands...plus it does not have even a fraction of the malware exploits and redundant anti-malware barriers to keep it off life-support.



The time you save in daily updating and scanning and keeping up with the latest exploit work-arounds can be used to learn the Linux flavor you choose. Takes about one hour to install and be on the Internet; a day or so more and you'll know how to maneuver inside the Linux environment. A week, and you'll be kicking yourself for not doing it sooner.



Check 'em:

Mint & Ubuntu (10.04) are decent starting systems, and resemble Windows enough to launch yourself into the Linux experience.

See here for how to's:

http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/installing

Answer 4

heebus_jeebus is correct. I also have a single-core machine running XP SP3, Firefox 9.0.1 and the latest version of Avast which is 6.0 on a 20GB hard drive. I even have the pro version of Malwarebyes Anti-Malware with real-time protection. I've never had any issues with them. Update your OS to SP3 so you won't have problems.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/322389



BTW, IE 8 also runs perfectly fine on XP SP3 even on a 1GB machine.

Answer 5

I suggest you try downloading and installing the free Secunia PSI (Personal Software Inspector).



https://secunia.com/vulnerability_scanning/personal/



This will look at your setup and tell you what needs updating to achieve decent security.



Whether you actually do anything or not is up to you.



The free Avast anti-virus is a perfectly good program which I use myself

Answer 6

I have a desktop running XP SP 3, and I don't have those issues.

Answer 7

I don't have any issues like u have. But u can use chrome and Kaspersky for best results.

Answer 8

First off, you might want to try cleaning up your whole system. Second, try google chrome. Third, try AVG.