14 DAY TRIAL // It's a well-known fact that Microsoft wants everybody to get rid of Windows XP as soon as possible, but it turns out that the company itself can't completely let this old operating system go.
Windows XP support officially ended on April 8, 2014, and since then, Microsoft warned that no other updates and security patches would be delivered to computers still running it.
However, the company broke its promise approximately two weeks after that by shipping a critical security patch designed to fix a flaw in Internet Explorer that was affecting not only Windows XP, but all the other Windows versions on the market.
Windows XP was anyway left out of the next Patch Tuesday cycles and although everyone believed that the company finally let this old OS version die, this isn't entirely true.
As McAkins Online noted, the company still delivered a June 2014 update to the Malicious Software Removal Tool as part of this month's Patch Tuesday rollout, while Security Essentials continues to receive updates as promised.
Redmond said earlier this year that Security Essentials would live on until mid-2015, but no new installations are allowed, so only computers that are already running the anti-virus software are still getting updates.
“You will not be protected. Microsoft Security Essentials is no longer available for download on Windows XP, for starters, but even if you already have Microsoft Security Essentials installed, you still won't be protected—even though you'll continue to receive AntiMalware signature updates for a limited time,” Microsoft says in a warning on its website.
“This is because Microsoft Security Essentials (or any other third-party antivirus software for that matter) will have limited effectiveness on PCs that do not have the latest security updates. What does this mean for you? That your PC running Windows XP will not be secure and will still be at risk for infection.”
But that didn't convince users to move from Windows XP to another OS version. At this point, stats show that approximately 25 percent of the world's desktop computers are still running XP, despite all these efforts to emphasize the risks of staying on an unsupported platform.
Many consumers have already expressed their intention to stick to Windows XP for a little bit longer, but other companies across the world started massive migrations to Windows 7 in order to make sure that no data is exposed in case someone finds an unpatched vulnerability in their software.