Support for Windows 98 and Windows ME ends in July

Support for Windows 98 and Windows ME ends in July

Software giants Microsoft has started informing the users of their vintage operating system products Windows 98 and Windows ME that the support for these OS would end up in the month of July this year.

The company posted in a notice posted to its Web site: “Microsoft is ending support for these products because they are outdated and these older operating systems can expose customers to security risks. We recommend that customers who are still running Windows 98 or Windows Me upgrade to a newer, more secure Microsoft operating system, such as Windows XP, as soon as possible.”

After the patch Tuesday in the month of July, which comes on July 11, the company would no longer be releasing security updates for these two operating systems. Users would only be able to access help online, which would be stopped next year.

Microsoft had released three critical security patches for Windows 98 and Millennium this month after they extended the final support stage for Windows 98 and Millennium from January 2004 to this year.

This would not be a big problem for corporate users considering a little percentage of them are still stuck on these two vintage products. As per market experts most of the corporate users are on Windows 2000 and would probably skip Windows XP to move on to Windows Vista in the coming years.

Vista is scheduled to release in January next year.