The machines in question are Intel dual cores, 2 to 3ghz, 2 to 4gb of ram. Currently they're all running windows xp home, unique licence keys, installed by me. They've been working for several months now and aren't running as well as when they were fresh. Over Christmas I'll reinstall xp on them as the easiest way to bring them back. This approach isn't great in the long term.
For reasons I don't understand, windows appears to fall apart with time. At a guess this is a combination of user error and malware. However reducating the user is not possible. I'm seeking a way of putting windows (xp or vista) onto these computers such that they'll run without appreciable performance decrease for a year or so.
So far I've tried a fairly competently nlited version of XP and an unmodifed, retail copy brought up to date using microsofts website on each machine. The working lifespan of each was approximately equal, just getting to reinstallation round three.
Where should I look? Vista is probably more secure than XP, and may well be more resistant to user error so I'm inclined to try this. I have vague plans of spybot running silently on each boot and of repeatedly removing temporary internet files. A firewall is surely a good thing, but needing the user to click allow/deny isn't going to work well as everything will be "allowed". Noscript on firefox is great until it stops them doing like filling out a form.
I can't persuade them to update and run spybot every few weeks, so it has to be zero user input really. Imaging the drive and just copying back from the image when required has potential, but then I'm still looking for guidance on how to set it up initially. Ill defined question I know. Cheers
For reasons I don't understand, windows appears to fall apart with time. At a guess this is a combination of user error and malware. However reducating the user is not possible. I'm seeking a way of putting windows (xp or vista) onto these computers such that they'll run without appreciable performance decrease for a year or so.
So far I've tried a fairly competently nlited version of XP and an unmodifed, retail copy brought up to date using microsofts website on each machine. The working lifespan of each was approximately equal, just getting to reinstallation round three.
Where should I look? Vista is probably more secure than XP, and may well be more resistant to user error so I'm inclined to try this. I have vague plans of spybot running silently on each boot and of repeatedly removing temporary internet files. A firewall is surely a good thing, but needing the user to click allow/deny isn't going to work well as everything will be "allowed". Noscript on firefox is great until it stops them doing like filling out a form.
I can't persuade them to update and run spybot every few weeks, so it has to be zero user input really. Imaging the drive and just copying back from the image when required has potential, but then I'm still looking for guidance on how to set it up initially. Ill defined question I know. Cheers
