Science Education Software: Going Dark

The Problem

My sister teaches nursing and biology, and like many other schools, she uses a lot of computer-based training activities, such as You try it.

The problem is that these things, especially the custom ones written by faculty, won't work in Windows 7.

They were written for Windows XP and for old versions of browsers and Shockwave, and cannot run in modern operating systems or browsers.

It's traditional for IT professionals to just tell everyone to rewrite their software to conform with modern standards every few years, but that is ridiculous in this case. This stuff is not sold for profit, and there is no reward for the teachers or the students in rewriting training tools just so IT pros can stop supporting old products.

A much better option is to just keep using Windows XP forever. The only problem with that is that Microsoft is abandoning it in April, 2014, so it will no longer get security patches.

So the question is: How can schools continue using Windows XP after 2014 safely?

Virtual Machines

One option would be to use old hardware running old operating systems, but that's usually not practical because the hardware itself wears out and is difficult to maintain.

A much better option is to run the old operating system as a virtual machine on modern hardware running a modern operating system such as Windows 7 (or even, if you must, Windows 8).

Isolation

A lot of people use old, vulnerable operating systems, especially in embedded systems like routers and point-of-sale systems.

The safest procedure is isolation -- keeping them off the Internet altogether.

If that can be done, that would be the best answer. Just run Windows XP in a virtual machine with no networking at all. Bring in the desired files on a USB stick and run them there.

Rollback

Another option is to use virtual machines that are easily restored to a clean state if they get infected or otherwise messed up.

Here are some solutions I know of.

Commercial Solutions

Deep Freeze is excellent. Every machine just returns to its original state upon reboot. I've never used it on virtual machines, but it should work.

VMware Workstation allows you to use snapshots to easily save a clean state and return to it. Infecting it and returning to a clean snapshot is a routine activity for malware analysts.

Free Options

DVD

If students are working at home, the simplest option is to just put a virtual machine on a DVD. To use it, students copy it to a hard disk and run it in appropriate free virtual machine software, such as VMware Player.

If a virtual machine gets infected or damaged, just discard it and make a fresh copy from the DVD.

VirtualBox

Virtualbox is free, and allows snapshots.

Microsoft Virtual PC

Microsoft Virtual PC had a feature called "Undo Disks" which acts like Deep Freeze.

I think this feature is still available in the latest version, but I'm not sure.

Antivirus

Whatever option you use, if you must use an old, abandoned operating system, you should run antivirus on it. There are plenty of good antivirus products out there now for Windows XP, including avast! and AVG.

After 2014, the antivirus products for Windows XP may start to be abandoned too. But if you isolate the machines, and roll them back as needed, you could continue to use Windows XP anyway for many years after that date.

Posted 9-27-13 3:11 pm by Sam Bowne
Excess sarcasm removed 3:38 pm 9-27-13