Another Reason to Ditch XP

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/11/12/us-microsoft-cybersecurity-idUSKCN0IW1PC20141112


A coworker confirmed how easy it was this morning. Send a malformed request to a PC, and execute code with admin permissions on remote machine.

 

Nasty. Thanks for the heads-up, man! Updating my Win 7 box now.

 

No problem. This is as big as heartbleed.

 

Thanks for the tip off Adry :-D
I completely missed this article and I am usually quite proactive on this sort of stuff so good one mate :cool

 

Thanks Adry, we knew this would happen eventually.
Hopefully the all the functionality in XP will return in a later OS.

 

I see what you did there. There is no functionality lost from Windows XP in future OSes, LOL. You simply do not like the later UIs.

 

Adry, please stop. There are features in XP that OS since then lack. Such is the price of progress.
I have posted these before and see no reason to deny they existed.
One feature that is haunting me right now as I try to update our users XP is the virtual desktop size. In XP you could create a desktop larger than your screen and as you hit the side it just moved. If you use a large screen at the office and do occasional work at home this allowed you to have the same desktop with no changes, only the minor annoyance of not being able to see the whole screen at once.
Win 7 lacks this feature and so far third party help has not been accepted well.
http://www.planningcommunications.com/virtual_desktop.htm

But as OP said, there is now a much larger push to change to 7 and deal with the problems.

 

That isn't a limitation of Windows. That is a driver level feature. Blame the manufacturers.

I believe a Quadro card can do it.

 

Thanks.
The critical point there is:

 

Please correct me if I am wrong.
WDDM disables this capability. However, WDDM is only the default system for graphics in Windows 7 and VISTA. The old Windows XP Display Driver Model (XPDM) is still present in Windows VISTA and and early Windows 7. The key is that you must "force install' the Windows XP display driver for your ATI card. The Windows XP display driver uses the XPDM graphics system that's still within Windows 7 and VISTA. You must install only the display driver. Install nothing else.

This approach works if your monitor is connected via VGA or DVI.
And it causes other issues. But as I understand it the graphics card drivers can no longer "lie" about the monitor size. No doubt this improves some things or prevents errors somewhere but it does seem to come from Windows and limit an ability.

 

The point is, the ability to do it in XP was from the video card manufacturer. In that it was removed has more to do with lack of demand more than anything else. In that you get it working with an old driver model gives a hint: Its old. Which means it is back from when they included it.

If WDDM didn't allow it, Nvidia Quadro cards would not have the ability to do it.

 

Adry, agreed on all counts.
Windows changed the driver requirements and the GPU manufacturers stopped supporting pan and scan desktop with the new drivers. You blame the GPU manufacturers for not doing the extra development, I blame Windows for not being backwards compatible.
Informative discussion and I thank you.

 

I know, it is terrible that MS stopped supporting 13 year old drivers. What were they thinking?

 

Hehe, what they always think.
If the product does not sell, force adoption.
That way you can make money simply by changing with no benefit.

 

The performance of wddm alone is reason enough.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Display_Driver_Model

 

Which leads us to
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2355703,00.asp
Mostly Win 7 is a trade off speed wise. If you do all the right things XP is much faster. If you do the other things Win7 is much faster. The performance of WDDM is a trade off, no faster or slower overall. WDDM does seem more stable because when the video driver crashes the OS does not. Whether you consider this a patch to hide bad coding or an improvement is up to you.

 

Yes it is, for GPU accelerated applications. Microsoft understands that an OS should not get in the way of applications. A worse performing driver model would hurt application performance. Nobody wins in those cases.

 

Thanks for the comments, now I have to sell management on a few new laptops with Quadro GPU's.

 

Lenovo likes to use Quadros.