vipejc

Hey, guys. Now that official XP support is over, the hackers are going to reverse-engineer the security updates for the newer versions of Windows and then create exploits for XP. Hackers can indirectly attack a computer through malware. Most of us know how to prevent that, but hackers can also directly attack a computer through OS security vulnerabilities. Now since Microsoft will never patch them, if a user takes every step to protect their XP system, from having a firewall installed to having anti-virus software installed to everything in between, is this really any risk? Could an attacker get inside a computer if the user doesn't install malware? If so, how? Would you say the built-in XP firewall will always protect the system, or could a hacker possibly exploit it and gain control of the system? All very important questions for XP warriors.

I have an AMD X1650 AGP video card. The card works and the driver is mostly stable. The display driver crashes XP in only two situations I know of: 1. While watching YouTube videos in 720p or higher. 2. And this is the bizzare one... When using my mouse's scroll wheel on a particular site, if I randomly scroll up or down too much. (This is the only site that has this problem. And I always use my scroll wheel on other sites in the same way and much more often, and the display driver has never crashed. I have the latest display driver, and I doubt the previous version of the display driver will fix it. The problem seems to be an intermittent display driver bug that causes a kernel-mode fault. The OS then either freezes for a few seconds before turning to a black screen, or the display driver gets corrupted showing many interlaced white and black lines for a few seconds, and then turns to a black screen. I then have to press the reset button on the tower to set the system straight again. XP never generates a mini-dump or event error after either crash. Has anybody ever experienced such a bizzare video card driver bug?

Thanks for confirming this, Jaclaz.

I just want to be sure there's no gotchas since my motherboard is older and DVI is newer.

I have an older motherboard from 2003. I've always used VGA for my monitor. Recently, my CRT monitor started showing signs of failing, so I was forced to buy an LCD monitor. The LCD monitor supports only DVI-D. I also had to buy a video card with a DVI-I port. Does the BIOS have to support DVI in order for the monitor to show the BIOS and boot-up screen? Or will my BIOS and boot-up screen show fine as long as my AGP graphics card doesn't have an issue? I don't want to run into trouble with the new monitor. All the quality LCD monitors use DVI-D, so I had to accept this forced upgrade.