I haven't been here for awhile and was surprised this thread had continued !
I suppose Microsoft security issues will always have an perpetual dynamic.
The reason most user are using it today is coz it is free.
And the reason to be free could be just 'colect' samples (of spywares) from the users
Just to add a bit of fuel to the collection of Data by M$ idea mentioned by P3t3rb0nn :
I've been trying to clean a friends computer, it's using XP home. Has a damn preinstall of XP (NEC) , and basically the thing is unstable. Because of the NEC factory pre-install it seems you have to basically format the computer if things go wrong, as the XP disk which came with the Comp. is just a recovery disk, which will re-install XP from a HDD partition.
Any way after talking to NEC
and finding this trap, I rang a technician at Microsoft to try to figure if there was an alternative. I could buy a XP cd and extract what I needed , as some applications aren't working; OR he said they'd be more than happy to help me fix what we ascertained as a SPY/malware problem. There's some entries in the Device Manager, which are not hardware , but are pretending to be
.
I was pretty amazed how persistent he was to help with curing this nasty infection and offering the services of a 1st grade technician.I believe they are collecting info. about Spy/Malware, which is a good thing, and this comp. certainly is under the control of a sophisticated virus.
It was picked up by my friends teenager who uses P2P programs , and game emulaters.
The software for the M.A.M.E. emulator has established itself as Hardware ; and there's a "logical Disk Manager Administrative Service" & "Windows User Mode Driver Framework" entry also. These are listed with ? & ! as unknown devices
Any wasys, if I dont have to Format I'll be happy !
So on Monday will be analysing the system with a bigtime M$ tech. They use HiJackThis logs as their major tool. Aint that funny that a free program is the Major tool of this billion dollar company. And the logs are worth there weight in gold to them I bet
Funny old world idn't it !!!