Microsoft to end support for Windows XP SP2

Anthony Caruana
Wednesday, 16 June 2010 21:17

Your IT - Mobility

Microsoft's support for XP is winding down with users being encouraged to move to Service Pack 3 or, better yet, Windows 7. Support officially ends on 13 July 2010.

 

The debacle that was Vista lead to many corporate customers to hang on to Windows XP for as long as possible leading to users running the same operating system for a very long time. XP was released in 2001. As a result, support for XP was extended but Micorosft is drawing a line through SP2.

However, the news isn't as bad as it seems. SP3 has been around for a while and Patch Tuesday means that XP is now a very robust and secure operating system. Support for SP3 continues until April 2014 so there's plenty of time for companies to plan a migration to Windows 7. This is important as hardware driver support for XP is likely to fade away as hardware makers start to drop legacy operating systems.

For those still running a version of Windows 2000, all formal support channels will close on 13 July 2010 with online support to continue until at least July 2011.