End Of Life Notifications

I am receiving a notice saying that support for my operating system has ended. What does this mean?

Nick, Adamstown

Hi Nick,

On the 8th of April 2014 Microsoft officially ended support for Windows XP. The crux of it is that your computer will no longer receive updates, including updates to security holes found in Windows XP.

This is has some pretty serious consequences. When hackers find new security holes in Windows XP, Microsoft won’t be releasing an update to fix it leaving you vulnerable.

While many people are complaining about this Microsoft has extended support on several occasions and launched campaigns to try inform users. As a last step Microsoft released an update providing the nagging notification you are written in about.

They have supported Windows XP for 12 years; they haven’t sold a copy of Windows XP since 2010. If you are currently running Windows XP your computer is probably quite a few years old.

There is no doubt people loved Windows XP however it is time to let go and move on. Windows 7 and Windows 8 provide a much more reliable and user friendly experience (Windows 8 with some add-ons to restore the start menu of course).

The recommended solution is to purchase yourself a new computer running either Windows 7 or Windows 8. Now it is understandable that not everyone can afford a new computer so we recommend at least the following:

• Run Windows update to ensure you have all the available updates by Microsoft.
• If you are running Microsoft Security Essentials, we recommend you switch to something else. While Microsoft will continue to provide updates for Security Essentials for Windows XP users until July 2015 we still recommend making the switch sooner rather than later.
• Stop using Internet Explorer. The latest version of Internet Explorer supported on Windows XP is IE8. Microsoft has also stopped supporting IE8 on Windows XP so you will no longer receive security updates for it either. We recommend switching to either Firefox or Google Chrome.

Hopefully that helps explain the message you are seeing and why you are seeing it.