The last release of Debian was not more stable than its old version. Except the last stable version has been released. I am ever use the last 8.5 version and I found bugs in Proxy. So Debian 7.8 is my best choise for most stable released. Your debian was too old, don't you want to upadate and upgrade it? Debian 5 was the most legendary stable... Nice choice @madmac.