The End of Windows XP – April 8, 2014

Posted on October 15, 2013 by · Posted in Uncategorized

On April 8, 2014, Microsoft has announced that it will no longer be providing support or security updates for its Windows XP and Windows 97 operating systems.  Internet Software Sciences  feels this is an extremely important event about which  we should notify our users since we get support calls from users who are running Web+Center on Windows XP machines or have computer networks or clients that are using Windows 97.  We hope you review the article below and send it around to your organization if a wake-up call is needed.

If you have any questions about migrating Web+Center from an XP computer to a newer  Windows OS, please review the migration notes below and contact us for upgrade options if desired.

Sincerely,

Scott Vanderlip
President, Internet Software Sciences

Trouble ahead!

Source: NetMarketShare.com (Real Time analysis of XP OS Users)

The Problem:

It is estimated that about 30-40% of computers are running Windows XP world-wide.  I can personally acknowledge that I have some older computers that I need to turn on occasionally to connect to external devices such as flat bed scanners and cameras.  These machines have worked for years and still provide the basic functionality that I need from them.  Many businesses and organizations do not have the resources to upgrade their machines and associated components or the time or desire to upgrade, if the XP computer they are using now works efficiently.

The issue for XP users after April 8th will be the Zero Day potential threat from Internet based viruses; XP computers connected to the net in some way quickly could become infected when support patches are not created for XP.

It is important to do a complete survey of your organization’s  machines and make plans for OS migration before the April deadline.  It could require much more than a machine upgrade; it might mean a change to a critical piece of your manufacturing operations.

Enough time or money to upgrade?
Some of the articles I have read suggests that a 12-18 month period is needed to properly purchase, upgrade and integrate new systems.  I recently talked to a Web+Center client of a large organization that still uses XP for hosting their Web+Center application and individual user machines with no plans in sight to upgrade.   We are only about 7 months away from this deadline that Microsoft has set.

Microsoft playing hardball for continued support:

Some companies have determined that they will just pay Microsoft to support them after this deadline but at a huge cost which is still to be determined.   Some articles mention that Microsoft will offer a $200/PC per year support cost for XP support after this date while other articles suggest costs of hundreds of thousands of dollars for more for larger organizations.

Currently Microsoft offers a Windows 7 with XP virtual mode option.  Some users were hoping that this mode in Windows 7 would be supported under Windows 7 after this date, but the Schwartz Report indicates that this is not the case.

Web+Center XP Migrations:

Web+Center will run on any Windows OS that supports IIS web server software, which includes any version except the “home” editions of the windows OS.  Your investment in time and or resources/data in the Web+Center application can be fairly easily migrated from an XP machine.  This can be done by copying all of the application files and the database (Access or SQL*Server) to the new machine.

Since Web+Center uses the standard IIS ASP scripting engine and the database ODBC drivers come with all of the versions of Windows, and we provide you with the ASP source code, you can simply copy and paste your entire XP Web+Center folder onto a newer machine and reconfigure your current application on a new machine without requiring a new installation.  The basic steps for migration are:

1) Copy the Web+Center folder and all associated folders (attached files, etc) to your new machine
2) Create your virtual/application directories (techXX, customerXX, businessXX, etc) using IIS on your new machine
3) Reconfigure your database ODBC DSN on the new machine
4) Register  (Regsrv32) the ASP mailler dll (aosmtp.dll) in the ASPmailer webcenter directory.
5) Apply the ‘Everyone Full Control’ file permissions for the Web+Center folder and sub folders.

This might also be a good time to consider upgrading to a new version of Web+Center.  Contact Internet Software Sciences for options to upgrade your Web+Center data and purchase support and licenses.

For more information about our latest Web+Center version and download and cloud hosting options, please visit our website https://www.inet-sciences.com

Other Articles:

Listed below are some other useful articles we have found on this topic that might help answer some questions you have concerning this topic.

 

Conclusions:

I know that XP has been and still is a real work horse for so many businesses and organizations. Software is a unique product where companies can often control when you stop using it and force upgrades for their own business reasons.  For many of these forced software upgrades, added to the cost of OS software upgrade are a series of dependent upgrades for other applications, hardware and interfaces.   We hope this article has helped you plan for this change to avoid some crises that could affect your organization in April!