Antimalware, firewall, and other security programs for Windows XP working in 2023 and hopefully beyond

[Dave-H]

Thanks @Tangy.
I would be interested to know your results.

Just an update, I spoke again today to Panda's technical support people at AnyTech365.
Again, really friendly and helpful people, who knew exactly what I was talking about.

They are thinking, as many here do, that Panda have actually withdrawn support for XP.
They agree that doing this by just breaking the legacy version of Panda Dome, is not a good way of doing this, especially for paying customers, and they are trying to find out whether this really is the case or whether this has been done accidentally and will be fixed, if indeed it's possible to do that.

There has certainly been no change made to the system requirements on Panda's website, and the article trumpeting its XP compatibility claims to have been updated on July 1st.

They have given me a number to ring for Watchguard, Panda's parent company, so I will try giving them a ring tomorrow to see what they say about this.

[Tangy]

@AstroSkipper I mean RAM. I got 8 GBs. MY xp reads around 3 GBs. There is something that my system does not like about it. I have not put any effort to find out what is causing that. Could it be that my xp is 32bits ?

[AstroSkipper]

It’s clear and obvious that Panda stopped supporting Windows XP for programme updates quite some time ago. The latest version is 22.03.05, nearly one year ago, and that was a long time ago. But to then go and break even that version via the automatic update – that’s a no-go.  And in doing so put the user’s partition at risk. 

[AstroSkipper]

Long story short, I have revived Comodo Antivirus 12.0.0.6818 (CAV) as part of the Comodo Internet Security suite (CIS) since it was no longer working out of the box. It's one of the last working antimalware programmes with real-time protection, HIPS, VirusScope, secure containmenr, online definition updates, even incremental definition updates, and the possibility of offline updating. This is now my new antimalware programme.  And Vir.IT of course. All free of charge.

Edited 21 hours ago by AstroSkipper

[AstroSkipper]

34 minutes ago, Tangy said:

@AstroSkipper I mean RAM. I got 8 GBs. MY xp reads around 3 GBs. There is something that my system does not like about it. I have not put any effort to find out what is causing that. Could it be that my xp is 32bits ?

Of course, only there is a limit of RAM memory size.

Edited Tuesday at 06:55 PM by AstroSkipper
corrected

[Dave-H]

25 minutes ago, AstroSkipper said:

It’s clear and obvious that Panda stopped supporting Windows XP for programme updates quite some time ago. The latest version is 22.03.05, nearly one year ago, and that was a long time ago. But to then go and break even that version via the automatic update – that’s a no-go.  And in doing so put the user’s partition at risk. 

Yes indeed, but if you remember, Malwarebytes did pretty much the same thing.
They maintained version 3.5.1 for several years 'as is' for XP users and still provided pattern updates for it.
Then they pulled the plug, without any warning, and no longer provided pattern updates, although the program still worked OK.
Likewise, Panda keep 22.03.05 as their legacy version for XP users, which can still be downloaded and installed.
As long as it still works, I'm not that worried if the program files are old.

This is not quite the same scenario, of course, as Panda doesn't use local pattern files for scanning, which makes it even stranger that they would suddenly break XP compatibility.
Whatever they do with the daily 'synchronisation' mechanism, it seems that has broken things. No program files have been changed as far as I can see.

 

[AstroSkipper]

3 minutes ago, Dave-H said:

as Panda doesn't use local pattern files for scanning

At the moment, I am very satisfied with CAV and Vir.IT as both use offline definition files. Comodo's definition file base.cav is nearly 640 MB in size and therefore much pattern inside. 

[AstroSkipper]

But if anyone now thinks that Comodo actively supports Windows XP, they are very much mistaken.  This company is still advertising Windows XP compatibility, specifically here https://antivirus.comodo.com/security/windows-xp-free-antivirus.php, but for years now, the installer provided has no longer been compatible with XP. It’s completely misleading and simply sloppy. Comodo discontinued support for Windows XP in 2019. Now it’s down entirely to the creativity of Windows XP users to breathe new life into old, discontinued versions. And exactly that was what I did. 

Edited 22 hours ago by AstroSkipper

[Tangy]

@Dave-H what is your microsoft office version on your xp? Mine is 2007. Could please add that to your panda exclusions ?

Thanks

When I scanned my system using panda cloud cleaner ( just wanted to make sure that it works ) I got this pop up which I did not read properly, it was almost 5 am

that ms office icon was not real or something along these lines. I cancelled the cloud service before getting the results it was taking more than 5 minutes and I wanted to call it a day.

Then I realised that ms office would not work along with system explorer.  I do not want to jump into any conclusions but I think it might be related.

PS. Very hard to access this forum since Monday

Edited 20 hours ago by Tangy
correction

[Dave-H]

I'm using Office 2010 on XP.

[Dave-H]

I got a response from Watchguard technical support.

"At this time, we have not received any official communication indicating that Windows XP support for Panda Dome has been discontinued. Based on the information currently available, Windows XP continues to be listed as a supported operating system for the legacy Panda Dome version referenced on the Panda website.
Based on the information you have provided, this issue appears to be related to **Panda Dome**, which is a consumer (home) product. While we understand your concerns regarding the recent crashes of **PSANHost.exe** on Windows XP, we are unable to investigate or provide support for Panda Dome through WatchGuard Technical Support."

So it appears that they only deal with professional business customers at Watchguard support, and they can't help private domestic customers.
I would have to use the domestic support channels for Panda support, which I've already done, of course!

The guys at AnyTech365 have promised to let me know if they hear anything about the status of XP support from Panda, so all I can do is wait.

[modnar]

1 hour ago, Dave-H said:

I got a response from Watchguard technical support.

"At this time, we have not received any official communication indicating that Windows XP support for Panda Dome has been discontinued. Based on the information currently available, Windows XP continues to be listed as a supported operating system for the legacy Panda Dome version referenced on the Panda website.
Based on the information you have provided, this issue appears to be related to **Panda Dome**, which is a consumer (home) product. While we understand your concerns regarding the recent crashes of **PSANHost.exe** on Windows XP, we are unable to investigate or provide support for Panda Dome through WatchGuard Technical Support."

So it appears that they only deal with professional business customers at Watchguard support, and they can't help private domestic customers.
I would have to use the domestic support channels for Panda support, which I've already done, of course!

The guys at AnyTech365 have promised to let me know if they hear anything about the status of XP support from Panda, so all I can do is wait.

How convenient for them "we are unable to investigate or provide support". Let them drink damage with Windows 11.

[AstroSkipper]

On 7/13/2026 at 2:46 PM, AstroSkipper said:

@Dave-H If you absolutely want to stick with Panda – presumably because you still have a valid licence – then I’d uninstall it completely, give everything a thorough clean, then reinstall it, but without allowing any connection to the internet. Then set the cache folder to read-only for everyone, especially for the System account, or if that doesn’t work, delete it completely. Then set all your exclusions and only then connect to the internet. No updates must be carried out locally. Perhaps it will then run stably. But to be honest, this isn’t of course a good workaround, as it unfortunately results in a loss of functionality. Personally, I’m done with Panda and would only go back if an official fix has been released or the update server has been corrected.

@Dave-H As you haven’t said anything about the suggestion I put forward so far, I’d like to know whether that’s an option for you, or whether limiting the online updates isn’t an option. You can always restore the cache folder once Panda support gets back to you, though I don’t really expect that to happen. 

Edited 12 minutes ago by AstroSkipper