Microsoft To Stop Supporting Windows XP Soon

Microsoft Corp. is all set bid farewell to some of its most popular operating systems of the past decade or so, as the software maker has announced that it will cease support for the likes of Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2), Windows Server 2000 and Windows 2000 Professional from the 13th July.

Furthermore, in an official announcement, Microsoft Hong Kong said that it will no longer provide support for Windows Vista Release to Manufacturing (RTM) from 13th April 2010.

This will come as a shocker for many, as the research company Forrester has estimated that even after a decade of its launch, Windows XP still accounts for as many as 80 percent of the total Windows powered PCs, far ahead of Windows 7 and Windows Vista.

Thus, starting from around mid-April, the software giant won’t offer support features to the machines running unsupported iterations of Windows or service packs.

In addition, the company also mentioned that customers would no longer have any specific migration route from Windows 2000 to Windows 7, and they would have to first upgrade to Windows XP in order to migrate to Windows 7 through Windows User State Migration Tool (USMT) version 4.0.