The end of Windows XP and the joy of your heathcare

[Admiral Valdemar]

We have a Windows CE 2 touchscreen built into an atomic absorption spectrometer in one lab. I remember having that OS on a PDA from '99.

[Torben]

As long as it works and does what you need to do, then there is no reason to change. Just remove insecure/outdated operating systems from interfacing with the internet. If they have to be connected to the internet, then they should be updated. If not, play at your own peril.

As an example, a local manufacturing company uses computers that run some version of DOS (or maybe Win95, I don't recall) to operate some of their CNC machines. The computers and machines, while old, are well maintained and still operate without issue. However, those machines are never, ever, ever allowed on the internet because they have little to no security built in. All of the computers that do interface with the internet are running current and properly configured versions of Linux. The servers are Mac Minis, also running Linux to operate virtual machines that run Server 2008.

Admiral Valdemar, I'd bet your machine running Windows CE is not connected to the internet, and why should it be? Same goes for a lot of devices mentioned in this thread. Take them off network and it won't matter how many vulnerabilities they have, the largest infection vector is removed. Lock down the USB ports and the things will be darned near bulletproof.

[Slacker]

I think a big part of it was that Vista was a trainwreck that as many people avoided as possible.
My desktop is still running XP, in fact. But it's a basic gaming and internet platform, while my laptop where I do actual work is running 7.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Admiral Valdemar, I'd bet your machine running Windows CE is not connected to the internet, and why should it be? Same goes for a lot of devices mentioned in this thread. Take them off network and it won't matter how many vulnerabilities they have, the largest infection vector is removed. Lock down the USB ports and the things will be darned near bulletproof.

Pretty much. It's a self-contained unit, so I have to print out the data and input it into our spreadsheets manually. All systems connected to the main intranet are XP these days, formerly 2000.

[Phantasee]

I work in a minister's office in the richest province this side of Saudi Arabia, and I have to use fucking WinXP at work. Most of the government departments are upgraded to Win7 (I believe all, at this point) with lots of them using Office 2010 or 2007. I walked into the MO though, and it was WinXP and a buggy install of 2k3 (which I'd barely used before, myself upgrading from 2k to 2k7 in 2010 at home).

Fortunately I got an upgrade to O2k7 quickly to fix the buggy install of 2k3, and there are a few Minister's offices and Associate Minister's offices running Win7, with even fewer also running O2k10, but I've been told MOs always last to be upgraded across government because we're 'mission critical'. Which doesn't quite make sense to me...

[Simon_Jester]

"Mission critical" means "upgrade last?" Hah.

My guess:

From the point of view of the senior decision-makers, "mission critical" probably means "inconvenient to do without." Which means "we hate it when their computers are down," which means "let's postpone the upgrade cycle and let them keep chugging along on the old OS."

[Stark]

No shit. You don't do a change first on the systems that can't afford lengthy downtime. It might be counter-intuitive but it makes sense from a risk-management perspective.

I mean without all the legacy bullshit software organisations use there wouldn't really BE a risk anyway, but that's how it works.

[White Haven]

It'd make a whole lot more sense to do mission-critical upgrades midway through the upgrade cycle. Not early enough that you risk teething-problem failures, not late enough that shit starts to break on its own at an accelerated pace.

[Stark]

It'd make 'more sense' if upgrade cycles weren't as long or longer than lifetime of upgrades too. Oh well?

[PainRack]

This is anecdotal but something I've noticed over the past few years of working in the IT side of the medical field here in the United States of exactly how many core systems in the medical field run exclusively on Windows XP.

If your not aware we are in the last year of Windows XP support from Microsoft. And while this does not mean come April 8th 2014 that all Windows XP machines deactivate. But what it does mean is that when security hole number 44592 is found no patch to fix it will be forthcoming from Microsoft. And over the years we've had plenty of fun ones that did everything from remote restarting against your will to renaming key system files to making all documents read only to the 3000 odd gain remote access to your system issues.

Which leads back into exactly how much of the medical field runs on custom software that only runs on Windows XP. In the site survey's I've been conducting the last few months for my new contractor it's staggering to travel to hospital after hospital where Vista does not exist, Windows 8 is on every laptop and every manager has a Windows 7 machine... and anything to do with the boring old non-critical things like patent records and the control software for the camera they jam in your holes all run on Windows XP.

Most hospitals I've run across are bad enough with custom software that costs you 200$ just to talk to someone and get support for it. Let alone the number of OR's I've seen with 80,000$ of equipment in one room all printing from a 2004 Pentium IV to some ancient HP printer which only offers parallel ports for printing. And it's on the network because of course the doctors need to be able to brows the internet on that machine between cutting patents open. That computer is not critical to providing medical care but it was where the nurses went to pull up patent records.

I saw this time and again during my surveys. True there were Dentist offices I ran through which had all newish 2010 Dell's with Windows 7 installed... But most of what I saw was the same 2004-2007 at the latest in every single emergency room from Chicago to Richmond. I've not been back to Bethesda in person myself but from what I've heard they still have the same 2006 HP's as they did when I ended up in the emergency room there.

Which leads me to this question. To those in the medical field in the US... how true does this hold to you? Windows XP machines for the most part and no roll out of new machines planned for this year?

Virtually everything, including some of the older doctors laptops are running on Windows XP over here. Its only in the last 3 years or so that the newer laptops given to the docs get Win7.


And I swear if it wasn't for youtube expiring support for IE, we still be using the same software from 2002......

[Questor]

There are a few options, and VMWare would love to charge you an arm and a leg to pull them off, but the reality is that this type of thing has been cyclical in the IT industry. I was just getting involved in IT during the waning days of NT, and I remember the panic back then.

It continues to amaze me that so many private companies actively refuse to plan the modern upgrade cycle, as I said, it's not exactly a new thing.

MS has also said that they're willing to continue to provide support on a custom basis for sufficiently stupidly large amounts of money. I would expect to Y2k/SAP R/2-level crash updates in the period between 4/8/14 and the expiration of support contracts.

As for the DBs... well, it's a great time to be a database professional!