Virus protection is just one vector. WinXP doesn't have several of the security features in newer versions of Windows. And even those it does have aren't as g

Virus protection is just one vector. WinXP doesn't have several of the security features in newer versions of Windows. And even those it does have aren't as good. Such as buffer overflow protection was updated in Win7, but not since XPSP2 for XP. It's fundamentally less secure top to bottom. Which is why there is exist many vulnerabilities that exist on XP, but not Win7. UPDATE: For a concrete example, see http://blogs.technet.com/b/srd/archive/2009/03/20/enhanced-gs-in-visual-studio-2010.aspx http://blogs.technet.com/b/srd/archive/2009/03/20/enhanced-g... -- added as a result of http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/Bulletin/MS07-017.mspx http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/Bulletin/MS07-017.... . There are a plethora of these sorts of things that architecturally make Win7 different than XP when it comes to security.