D.E.P. Does anyone Know.

Hey People! I keep hearing people using Vista, about DEP.WHAT IS IT? I run XP SP2, with Athlon64 3800+. Do we, XP users, have DEP and if so how to tell,and how to activate it if not on.Also any information on the subject would be greatly appreciated.Thank You for your efforts.

Flashorn

 

Data Execution Protection.

This will explain it better than anyone else can, I'm sure.

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

Yes, XP SP2 has it.

 

Hello Flashorn, welcome to Major Geeks.

Data Execution Prevention (DEP) has been around about 4 years and was originally a hardware thing.

Essentially it is a way of preventing applications accessing certain critical memory areas, used by the system or these days other applications.

Originally your hardware had to support it however it is possible to emulate this in software to some degree. XP SP2 and your hardware are both compatible . XP even provides degree of rudimentary program compartmentalisation but you need Vista to get this properly.

In XP look for your boot.ini file and open it in notepad. Don't change anything just read it.

There should be a line which reads something like
............................./noexecute=optin

settings are
optin........turn on for Windows only

optout......turn on for all programs that I select

alwayson....turn on, no exceptions

alwaysoff...disables DEP

You can also get to the first two settings only by

Rightclick My computer>properties>advanced>performance>settings
choose data execution prevention tab
use turnon / off for programs this equals the optout/in in boot.ini
add /remove to make changes

 

Hey Studiot! Thanks a bunch for that detailed analysis on how to switch on DEP. But I must point out(unless I read you wrong)that in the OPTOUT option in XP, DEP is always on for every program & services running on your PC.Now in order to exclude a program or service that disagrees with DEP,you then must opt it out manually.I believe,from all the documentation that I've read, Vista"s DEP works differrently. Now I did enable the OPTOUT option and so far none of the programs installed have complained.Yes i tried them all even mail.
Again Thank you for providing me with the means for me to help myself.

Flashorn

 

Hey Adrynalyne! Thank You for the RED EYES.No,kidding aside,WIKI had a wonderful expose on the subject. I especially liked the links that were incorporated in the text.There is one more link that i found(after a bottle of Visine), which might be of interest to others who have the same query.It is www.updatexp.com. Again Thank You for the quick response to my question.Don't worry the red eyes are almost gone Ha!.

Fashorn

 

You spotted the deliberate mistake - have a chocolate biscuit.

Sorry for any confusion, yes optout is just that you have to list the exceptions.

Yes Vista has some new additional toys, depending upon which version you have.