J
Jeff A. Davis
I've got an old Windows XP that we still use occasionally that is plugged into our home network's Linksys Wi-Fi router basically only to give it an internet signal. We don't use it for anything else. Even our printer is just used by dragging a long USB cable over to the old PC if we want to print something, which is rare.
Since I've heard that having an old PC like that on a network exposes all of your other computers (only 2 and both are Windows 10), my not being a computer hardware expert in the least, I'd thought that maybe I could buy an Ethernet "Y" to put into the cable between the modem and router and just plug a cable into it from that old XP PC the internet and then going into the Control Panel on that machine and Removing Device from our Davis-home network.
We don't use the Wi-Fi on the XP machine and it is turned OFF.
Could it be that simple to feed the internet to the old XP PC while eliminating any risk of invasion by hackers or malware to our other computers?
The old XP machine has McAfee anti-virus that also looks for Potentially Unwanted Programs (PUPs) and I have it set to do a scan every other day at 1pm since that is a time that we could possibly be using it since we're home all-day, everyday. I guess if we aren't using it for a week, not only are there not scans being done and no virus updates being downloaded into McAfee, but there's also no risk of infection until we use it the next time. The thing sits unused sometimes for weeks.
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Since I've heard that having an old PC like that on a network exposes all of your other computers (only 2 and both are Windows 10), my not being a computer hardware expert in the least, I'd thought that maybe I could buy an Ethernet "Y" to put into the cable between the modem and router and just plug a cable into it from that old XP PC the internet and then going into the Control Panel on that machine and Removing Device from our Davis-home network.
We don't use the Wi-Fi on the XP machine and it is turned OFF.
Could it be that simple to feed the internet to the old XP PC while eliminating any risk of invasion by hackers or malware to our other computers?
The old XP machine has McAfee anti-virus that also looks for Potentially Unwanted Programs (PUPs) and I have it set to do a scan every other day at 1pm since that is a time that we could possibly be using it since we're home all-day, everyday. I guess if we aren't using it for a week, not only are there not scans being done and no virus updates being downloaded into McAfee, but there's also no risk of infection until we use it the next time. The thing sits unused sometimes for weeks.
Continue reading...