Microsoft will end the extended support cycle for Windows XP on April 8, 2014. This means that after this date no more security patches or maintenance updates will be released by Microsoft. For all practical purposes, Windows XP will be dead after this date.

We at the Physics Department are going to face some problems when XP reaches its end of life:

• Our client computer network is directly exposed to the Internet, thus we depend on a continuous availability of operating system patches. Furthermore we are bound to ETH's Acceptable Use Policy for Telematics Resources (BOT), which orders every system owner to install OS upgrades to avoid security issues. Since for Windows XP no more security patches will be available after April 9, 2014, from then on it is not possible to fulfill the BOT requirements and to ensure overall system security. Running Windows XP connected to the ETH network will become a security issue after the April 8, 2014 and will not be tolerated by ETH's network security.
• A network scan unveiled several dozen Windows XP machines still connected to our client computer network. One reason may be that measurement instrument controller software still depends on that version of Windows. Also old hardware might be in use which does not run well with a newer operating system.

Regarding these facts, we would like to ask you to start analyzing your Windows XP machines and the dependencies and reasons of the existence of this operating system. The following points provide some steps and hints about the process to eliminate or upgrade current Windows XP machines.

• Check whether there are Windows XP machines still in use in your computer ecosystem and analyze whether a software or hardware component really depends on this version of Windows.
• In case your Windows XP installation is needed to control specific lab equipment and you are locked to this OS version, please check with the manufacturer of the equipment whether new software or drivers are available or a hardware upgrade allows to migrate this Windows XP computer to a newer version of Windows.
• If an upgrade to a newer Windows release generates extra cost, now would be a good time to spend this money to keep your systems and equipment up to date and to have a stable environment without running into IT security concerns in the near future.
• Please draw up any possible cost to the 2014 budget so new hardware/software can be ordered prior to the end of life date of Windows XP and the system can be upgraded in advance.
• If you face a situation in which it is not possible to upgrade to a higher version of Windows for technical or financial reasons, please contact us. We can help you analyze your specific situation and can try to find particular solutions to isolate your Windows XP installation from the network or maybe find a way to upgrade to a higher OS release.

You are welcome to contact us in any case of questions or concerns relating the Windows XP end of life topic. We can provide help to migrate away from Windows XP as swift as possible so you can keep your systems secure and stable.

Please note that after April 8, 2014, Windows XP will not be tolerated on the ETH network and we will be required to enforce this rule.

The ETH Zurich will be officially closed between Monday, 24th of December 2012 and Monday, 2nd of January 2013. During this time, we can only provide limited support. Please follow these rules to save us from superfluous work:

• Switch off printers
• Switch off your personal workstation and notebook except for the following:
• Do not switch off our managed Linux workstations.

We will try to follow our e-mail, but you may also have luck and meet some of us in our IRC channel.

Sophos Anti-Virus may tell you that a virus named 'Shh/Updater-B' has been detected on your Windows computer. Please ignore this alert messages! Sophos accidentially sent out a bad virus defintion database last night which causes the virus scanner to detect the above mentioned virus in several legitimate programs on your system. We take action to update Sophos with a fresh and functional database. Thanks for your patience.

Update 10:20 21-09.2012: Sophos aknowledged the problem and issued new definition update to solve the false postive detection problem. ISG D-PHYS managed Windows machines are no more affected by this iusse. If you still encounter problems on your self-managed Windows machines running Sophos refer to the following knowledge base article which may be a good entry point to find help:

http://www.sophos.com/en-us/support/knowledgebase/118311.aspx

In order to gain more flexibility and performance, the home directories will move to our new SAN setup.

This will be done on Thursday, 5. January 2012, between 18:00 and 22:00.

During this time the home directories (winhome, machome, unixhome), the mail services and some websites will not be available.

To protect you from losing or corrupting any of your files, we strongly recommend you close all open files on the home directories before the migration.

Since we have switched to generic names for our services, the home directories will still be accessible the same way as before after the migration is over, so you don't have to change anything.

Update, Jan 10: We experience some unexpected and dubious problems with 32bit binaries (and therefore, 32bit machines). The symptoms range from not being able to log in (GNOME and KDE) to acroread and mathematica not starting. Workarounds while we're working on a solution: for failing logins, please call us. For acroread, use evince instead. For mathematica, log in to a 64bit machine, eg. login.phys, and start it remotely.

Update, 21:25: The migration is finished and everything should work again! In case of problems please contact the ISG Helpdesk (3 26 68)

The ETH Zurich will be officially closed between Monday, 26th of December 2011 and Monday, 2nd of January 2012. During this time, we can only provide limited support. Please follow these rules to save us from superfluous work:

• Switch off printers
• Switch off your personal workstation and notebook except for the following:
• Do not switch off our managed Linux workstations.

We will try to follow our e-mail, but you may also have luck and meet some of us in our IRC channel.

The ETH Zurich will be officially closed between Friday, 24th of December 2010 and Sunday, 2nd of January 2011. During this time, we can only provide limited support. Please follow these rules to save us from superfluous work:

• Switch off printers
• Switch off your personal workstation and notebook except for the following:
• Do not switch off our managed Linux workstations.

We will try to follow our e-mail, but you may also have luck and meet some of us in our IRC channel.

On July 13th 2010, Windows 2000 Server/Professional and Windows XP Service Pack 2 will no longer be supported with security updates by Microsoft.

Machines running these operating systems should be upgraded to newer versions like Windows 7 or Server 2008 if they are directly connected to the D-PHYS network.

The IT Use Policy of ETH does not allow systems without an active patch cycle to be connected to the ETH network.

Please make sure that all computers running any of the affected operating systems have been migrated by July 13th 2010. The same also applies to even older systems like Win 9x or NT 4.0 of course.

More information about Microsoft Support Lifecycle can be found here.

We are happy to announce that our printer server now accepts print jobs sent by Windows 64bit-Clients.

Read our instructions if you are using our printer server.

Last night Microsoft has released the Security Bulletin Summary for November, 2009.
If Automatic Update is not activated yet, then you must visit Microsoft Update to install the Security Updates.

Last night Microsoft has released the Security Bulletin Summary for October, 2009.
If Automatic Update is not activated yet, then you must visit Microsoft Update to install the Security Updates.