Take the thing to a reputable recycler to minimize your environmental footprint, or move on to Windows 7 or a current Linux distribution. I get the desire to use the things you have and not be wasteful, but 15 years is ancient in Internet time. Compared to what you're using, the low-end $400 Win10 laptops available at commodity electronics retailers are far superior, and they'll offer you another decade of operating system support, and if that's too much, a Chromebook will run you $200. Seriously, if you're doing anything remotely sensitive with the machine (banking, healthcare, etc.) or it's attached to a network with other machines that do sensitive things, it's time to do something about it.

There's a reason that they teach kids starting out in the security space how to write malware for WinXP.

That said, it sounds like the problem you're experiencing is that Windows XP SP2 and below (which is widely available as a cracked version through torrents, complete with pre-installed malware) is that it lacks the cryptographic technology necessary to ship software that can be proven as authentic, unmodified and attributable to the actual authors. If you're not able or willing to buy a current operating system for your computer, the Linux community provides a number of free, open-source options, for which Flash Player is available. You don't actually have to throw the computer away, but it really *is* time to move to a modern operating system. With regard to WinXP in particular, we're talking about an operating system released in 2001, in an era when the security landscape changed from teenagers in basements to state-sponsored cyberwar. I've updated the title of this thread to more accurately describe what's happening.Īlso, to be clear, computers and software become obsolete, and it becomes impractical to both support ancient operating systems indefinitely, and provide a secure, working product.

Cannot install flash player on winxp