Anyone still running Windows XP won’t be able to argue they weren’t warned that support is stopping soon. From later this week, machines running XP will start displaying pop-up notifications that support and patches for the operating system ends in April.
From 8 March, Windows XP Home or Professional users with updates switched on will see a desktop notification reminding them of the looming end of support. While it’s possible that some rusted-on Windows XP users don’t have updates switched on, you’d expect most users to encounter this message. Microsoft is also offering free copies of a new data migration tool, PCmover Express for Windows XP, to help individual users migrate their data when they upgrade.
Windows XP support ends on 8 April, though Microsoft will continue to produce security signatures for its own security software for 12 months after that and will provide expensive paid support for corporates who haven’t yet switched onto a newer version.
New Windows XP data transfer tool and end of support notifications [Windows Experience Blog]
Comments
19 responses to “Windows XP Will Now Notify You That It’s Dying”
Well on the plus side, my uncle still running Windows 95 won’t see this message, as I think his dialup internet is out of minutes..
How about allowing the upgrade version of Win8.1 to upgrade XP then??
Architecture is too different in terms of drivers and operating system as a whole. Reinstallation is the only option at this point.
Actually, you can do an in-place upgrade…you just have to go via Vista and Win 7 first (and XP users might would probably prefer Win7 anyway).
Admitedly that’s a whole day’s work, but considering that day of work would mean anybody who wants it won’t own your banking details, it’s probably not exactly a wasted day.
It can be done. Just not directly. You can go XP -> Vista -> 7 -> 8 -> 8.1. Just technically you need to be licensed at each step but if you ignore that legal technicality you can get it done, well also a crap load of time for each upgrade. Compatible applications intact.
Hm, it doesn’t settle with me as you are also carrying a lot of residue from all the OS installations.
XP is also 32-bit (we don’t speak of the 64-bit edition) thus (if I remember right) you can only upgrade to the 32-bit version of the latter OSes. Even if you could install the 64bit version via an upgrade, the 64-bit version is very strict with drivers (by default it only allows 64-bit drivers and you have to manually force install 32-bit drivers if need be) and might hit a snag along the path.
I understand the legacy crap but I have had circumstances where a borked half running OS is fixed when upgraded. Also some people may have applications that they cant reinstall and an upgrade is the only way to avoid that.
Also yes you are stuck permanently on 32bit but if you have a line of business application you cant change for whatever retarded reason it may be your only option, it also isn’t a smooth transition. I would always do a clone image first before attempting.
everyone should check out reactOS
Embarrassingly for the government … quite a few of our WAN exposed machines are still on XP since apparently some “essential” software won’t run on any more recent Windows flavour.
I’m not sure what IT are planning to do … presumably continuing with their current policy … which seems to consist of putting their fingers in their ears and singing la-la-la …
Oh well, it’s not like they had any notice that this was going to happen … after all, these warnings have only *just* started to appear on our computers …
Well, If they know what’s good for them they’ll be:
-Warning management loudly that this will cause big problems and something has to be done
-Treating the machines as already compromised, possibly putting them on a different vlan and firewalling them off from the rest
-Quietly building an XP VM in the background, so that when everything goes wrong and management demands answers they can do a fresh win7 install and make everybody run virtualbox as required. (Bonus points if they get it running on a 2003 R2 terminal server, deploying it as a remoteapp and getting one more year of supported use)
Of course, it’s just as likely they’ll be touching up their resumes and browsing job sites. Sometimes you just get tired of dealing with a broken situation.
you just narrated my life
The Y2K problem was addressed more aggressively and done well. The terminal server option below sounds good.
If I am not accessing the internet and am just using a couple of programs on a bootcamp partition is this going to significantly affect me?
if you dont have it connected to the internet in anyway then you are safe… its more about the computers that are connected to the internet as they will be vulnerable and all you need is 1 vulnerable computer and your whole network is compromised.
I can’t upgrade. My Asus NForce 4 motherboard has no drivers for anything after XP. It was originally built nine years ago and is still going strong, even though *all* parts have been replaced along the way. It runs an Athlon 64 4600 dual-core, 2GB RAM, a 1GB Radeon 4870, with two 250GB Seagate drives in RAID0 with a 1TB drive for files. It runs some current games as well as all my old ones at 1920×1200 and it seems stupid to junk it while it’s still going strong.
A new box is not likely at this point.
she’ll be right mate.
for some reason your comment made me feel old. i guess its because i remember when those were new. that was around the time i still thought building my own pc and playing games on it was a reasonable practice.
Urgh… I like to think of myself as relatively technologically literate (and the amount of time and effort that has gone into helping upgrade and support the computers of friends and family is just ridiculous), yet I’m still running XP on a 9 year old desktop as my main home computer! I guess this is as good as any for an excuse to finally spend a bit of money on myself, and buy something new.
And on that note – I’d considered buying parts and building for myself, but due to work commitments, spare time for build is short for the next little while. Can anyone recommend a good retailer who’ll put together something a little bit custom for me? And not looking for Windows on the box, as I’d prefer to run some linux variant on there.
Here: http://www.arc.com.au/
If you *Have to* have XP, get it running in VirtualBox or VMware. Get it locked down, and *Never* install new software.
Keep your data on a separate drive, and ensure changes to the virtual image are NOT saved when shutting down. Back up your data, just in case [you do this anyway, right?]