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Windows Operating Systems life cycle

At regular interval, Microsoft stops providing support to their previous Operating System. I am wondering how many people know about it and do they really understand the effect of this on their PCs. Hence, I thought about writing this article.

Every Microsoft product has its lifecycle. It starts when it was launched and ends when it is no longer been supported. It is useful to know when your OS is no longer being supported so that you can take decision about upgrading OS and make necessary changes to your applications.

Microsoft announces End of Support date for their products that means from that particular date, Microsoft will no longer offer any fixes, updates or technical assistance of that product. As a user, you will have to make sure that you’ve installed latest update or service pack available for that program.

Here are some key dates from Microsoft:

Operating System
Latest update or Service pack
End of mainstream support
End of extended support
Windows XP
Service Pack 3
14/04/2009
08/04/2014
Windows Vista
Service Pack 2
10/04/2012
11/04/2014
Windows 7
Service Pack 1
13/01/2015
14/01/2020
Windows 8
Windows 8.1
09/01/2018
10/01/2023
Windows 10
N/A
13/10/2020
14/10/2025

Note: To continue receiving support for Windows 7, please make sure that you’ve installed Service Pack 1.

Windows Servers’ End of Life support dates are:

Operating System
End of mainstream support
End of extended support
Windows Server 2003
31/07/2010
14/07/2015
Windows Server 2008
06/05/2008
14/01/2020
Windows Server 2012
09/01/2018
10/01/2023
Windows Server 2012 R2
09/01/2018
10/01/2023


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