The Last Day Is Fast Approaching For Windows XP

Windows XP will not quit working on April 7, 2014. It will work just like it does on April 6. But it will no longer get updates from Microsoft.

For some users this may not really be a problem. As long as a user has a backup so that when their computer gets hacked or infected, they can restore it to a good condition, at least as good as Windows XP can be.

I have a Fujitsu laptop with Windows XP SP3.  Recently I put this computer back to when it was new in 2005. I installed all of the updates and put just a few basic stuff on it and installed all of the games we like to play and made a full backup. It will no longer be connected to the Internet when there are no more security updates.

This computer is really better than a lot of what is available today in terms of hardware.But it is old tech. Windows XP was a great system (still is in lots of ways). Unfortunately there are big security holes. A great many of them were patched, but the code is old and some of those holes just can’t really be fixed.

So what will  you do if you are still using Windows XP?  Will you just keep using it or get a new computer? You could just upgrade the operating system.

Find out if your PC can run Windows 7 with the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor.

Or maybe you want to go to Windows 8?  How to upgrade to Windows 8 (You will like Windows 7 better.)

There are some ‘gotchas’ to watch out for, mainly drivers, usually the driver for your video card, but there could be driver issues for other hardware.  The advisor should let you know in advance what you might have a problem with, as well as programs you are using.

Before you install a new version of Windows, be sure to backup any important data files to external media, such as an external hard drive, flash drives or even CDs. If you aren’t sure which files to back up, look at the How-to Geek’s site for suggestions.

We upgraded an old HP desktop (2003) from Windows XP to Windows 7. The only issue was the video driver. If you don’t play any games, the generic drivers will probably work.  We found a driver on HPs website, it was a driver for Vista, but it worked.

Please note, you will have to do a clean install and reinstall all of your programs.  A lot of your old data can be found in a file on the C drive, named windows.old. But just to be on the safe side, make that external backup of your files. Once you are sure you have all of stuff safely on the new Windows, you can remove the windows.old using Disc Cleanup. Disc Cleanup can be found in Accessories/System Tools.