Support for Windows 2000 and Windows XP Service Pack 2 due to end

In half a year, on the 13th of July, 2010, the support life cycles of several Windows operating systems will come to an end: "Extended support" will expire for the entire Windows 2000 family (including Professional and all Server versions), which means that Microsoft will completely discontinue the maintenance of these products. After the 13th of July, the vendor only plans to provide "online self-help resources", such as its Knowledge Base, free of charge.

On the same day, Windows Server 2003 reaches the end of its first support phase, which applies to all versions. The second phase will end on the 14th of July, 2015. Support for Service Pack 2 for Windows XP (32-bit) will also end on the 13th of July, 2010: Microsoft usually supports Service Packs for up to 12 months after the release of their respective successors, however, due to customer demand Microsoft extended this for Windows XP SP2 to 24 months. However, this support life cycle has nothing to do with the support life cycle of the operating system itself: "Extended support" for Windows XP is set to continue until 2014 – , this bizarrely means that for some versions of XP the support life cycle will be longer than that for Vista.

For its operating systems, Microsoft has for some time offered a general "Mainstream" support cycle of either five years, or of up to two years after the release of a successor. During this time, the vendor not only promises to provide free security patches, but also accepts requests for "non-security" hot fixes and offers technical support, some of which requires payment.

During the second phase ("extended support"), Microsoft only provides important patches that close holes with a critical security rating to download free of charge. All other patches require payment. However, this second support phase is restricted to the business and developer products. Current exceptions are the Windows XP Home Edition and the Windows XP Media Center, which, although intended for home users, enjoy "extended support".

Discontinued support for Windows XP SP2 officially means that only patches for Windows XP with Service Pack 3 will be released from the 13th of July – chances are that the patches won't install on systems which only have SP2 and will require an upgrade to SP3. The support for Windows XP without, or even with SP1, ended quite some time ago.

(crve)