Microsoft announced two important deadlines within the same press release. Here is the breakdown:
Tuesday July 11, 2006 - Critical updates and public technical support is discontinued for Windows 98 (any edition) and Windows ME. These operating systems are considered too outdated to continue supporting them against modern exploits.
Tuesday October 10, 2006 - Microsoft will stop producing critical updates and will discontinue public technical support for Windows XP Service Pack 1.
To continue to receive updates and support after that date, all users of Windows XP must upgrade to Windows XP Service Pack 2 as soon as possible. Hopefully you have already done this . . . but if not then now is the time.
Certain corporations with current Premier Support Agreements (contracts) with Microsoft may continue to receive private updates for the discontinued operating systems in special circumstances - for a “while.” I have heard that those special exemptions in the agreements will be faded out as soon as possible - which likely means when the contract is renewed - the above legacy OS’s will be dropped from them.
Also, all currently released documentation and fixes for these older operating systems will continue to be kept available online on Microsoft’s web site for an undefined future period - perhaps many years.
What does this mean if you still use one of these legacy systems? It means that satisfactory mitigation for future security problems on Windows 98, ME or XP-SP1 is severely limited, perhaps impossible. It’s time to replace any systems you own with a modern computer and OS. Even with the Microsoft Vista release on the horizon in January, support for Windows XP SP2 and Windows Server 2003 is expected to continue for several more years.
