Miscellaneous Operating Systems/Hardware

Those of you who have systems running Windows 2000 might want to check for any last updates this week, as Microsoft will move all remaining flavors of the venerable OS from Extended Support mode to Retired mode on July 13, 2010.

In other words, Microsoft will no longer officially support Windows 2000 after next Tuesday. While some support material will likely remain on the website, there are no guarantees about what will remain or for how long, so be sure to download any necessary patches, service packs, and security fixes if you actively run W2k. (Microsoft indicates that "self support" materials will remain for one year after retirement.)

General information about Microsoft lifecycle policy is at http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/

Microsoft's Windows 2000 End-of-Support site is at http://support.microsoft.com/ph/1131

EDIT: Somewhat more detailed info about what goes away on July 13 is at http://support.microsoft.com/gp/lifean46

Thanks for the info josehill.
I believe we have migrated the last 2000 machine some time ago and we are Premium support customers so we get (best effort) support and patches even for depreciated versions.

But it will be a much bigger scramble for us when they drop support for 2003 as the majority of our servers are running on 2003R2, and our AD is on 2003R2.
I wonder how many IT shops there is out there that are still running on 2003R2 instead of 2008 ?

//Harry

We're just migrating from 2003 to 2008. It isn't easy these days with global business.
Late last year IT pushed out a 2000 to XP upgrade. Still need IE6.0 though!

At least there is a little bit of time left to plan a W2003 migration, since most flavors of Windows Server 2003 are under Extended Support until July 14, 2015 .

I suspect that you are not alone in continuing to run W2003. W2003 seems to be one of those "good enough" products that make the cost/benefit of upgrading to a newer version less than obvious.