Microsoft ended support for Windows Vista RTM, the original and patch-free version of its much-maligned operating system, on April 13. Those who want to continue using a supported version of Vista will need to update their copies with service packs.
“What does ‘End of Support’ mean?” Eric Ligman, global partner experience lead for Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Group, wrote in an April 9 post on the Microsoft SMB Community Blog. “Once your version of Windows reaches the EOS date, it is classified as an ‘unsupported version’ of Windows. An unsupported version of Windows will no longer receive software updates from Windows Update.”
In addition, Microsoft does not offer problem resolution services for unsupported products, Ligman said, meaning that, “in the event that you encounter an issue [or] outage in your environment on an unsupported product, our engineers may not be able to help resolve this until you have upgraded to a support level.”