Microsoft end of support dates

Wolffan
rnews.com Fri, 10
Jul 2020 11:29:07 GMT in alt.computer.workshop, wrote:

On 10 Jul 2020, Apd wrote
(in article ):

"Commander Kinsey" wrote:
On Fri, 10 Jul 2020 01:30:22 +0100, Eric Stevens wrote:
On Thu, 09 Jul 2020 23:51:43 +0100, "Commander Kinsey" wrote:

Just found this beauty: Windows 1.0 ran from 1985 until
2001!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_1.0

"Windows 1.0 was released on November 20, 1985"

"On December 31, 2001, Windows 1.0 was declared obsolete
and Microsoft stopped providing support and updates for the
system."

Those who used it regarded Windows 1.0 as obsolete almost
from the beginning.

I never even heard of it and wondered why Windows 2 was the
first one. When I looked up that query, I found there was a
windows 1.

But it's very odd they supported it until 2001, by which times
we'd had Windows 2, 3, 95, 98, NT 4 (and 1, 2, 3?) 2000.

That 2001 date was also the time they stopped supporting MSDOS 6
as well as Win 2 & 3 which depended on it or lower versions.
Win95& 98 ran on MSDOS 7+.

95/98/98SE/ME were actual OSes. Win 1/2/3.x were applications
running on DOS.

Umm, not quite. They were 32bit extensions still running on top of
MSDOS 7. You could still load TSRS and such before the windows
interface loaded. Windows 3x/9x weren't their own OS yet.
Technically, win3.1 and 3.11 (.11 was geared more for networking, not
home users) introduced the 32bit extensions which would later become
exclusive in the form of the PE format exe, to replace the old style
NE format windows 3x was using.

But, windows3x/9x by themselves was not an OS anymore so than win3x
was. No DOS, No Windows for any of them.


--
Bad or missing mouse. Spank the cat [Y/N]?

Snit
Sat, 11 Jul 2020 04:42:47 GMT
in alt.computer.workshop, wrote:

On 7/10/20 8:29 PM, Eric Stevens wrote:
On Fri, 10 Jul 2020 07:29:07 -0400, Wolffan
wrote:

On 10 Jul 2020, Apd wrote
(in article ):

"Commander Kinsey" wrote:
On Fri, 10 Jul 2020 01:30:22 +0100, Eric Stevens wrote:
On Thu, 09 Jul 2020 23:51:43 +0100, "Commander Kinsey" wrote:

Just found this beauty: Windows 1.0 ran from 1985 until
2001!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_1.0

"Windows 1.0 was released on November 20, 1985"

"On December 31, 2001, Windows 1.0 was declared obsolete and
Microsoft stopped providing support and updates for the
system."

Those who used it regarded Windows 1.0 as obsolete almost
from the beginning.

I never even heard of it and wondered why Windows 2 was the
first one. When I looked up that query, I found there was a
windows 1.

But it's very odd they supported it until 2001, by which times
we'd had Windows 2, 3, 95, 98, NT 4 (and 1, 2, 3?) 2000.

That 2001 date was also the time they stopped supporting MSDOS
6 as well as Win 2 & 3 which depended on it or lower versions.
Win95& 98 ran on MSDOS 7+.

95/98/98SE/ME were actual OSes. Win 1/2/3.x were applications
running on DOS.

And Windows 2000 was actually NT5. It was where Windows started
to properly grow up.


Windows naming was weird back then.

For the home it went from 3.1 to 95 to 98 to ME

No, it didn't. Windows 3.11 wasn't really meant for home users. That
was for business networking.

And for the pros it went from NT to 2000

Not necessarily. The token ring network I discussed previously were
all hd less windows3.11 machines, powered by a novell server. Some
pros went for Novell back then, Snit. It was (and still is) a very
reliable, server OS.



--
Things only *appear* to get lost -- they're actually waiting for you
in next week.

Joel news:km4kgfh6l8v2u94nb666eiobc1p926osoo@
4ax.com Sat, 11 Jul 2020 19:30:43 GMT in alt.computer.workshop, wrote:

"Apd" wrote:
"Snit" wrote:

And for the pros it went from NT to 2000

This, a completely different OS from the earlier Wins, went from
NT 4.0 to NT 5.0 (2000).


2000 and XP, and Server 2003, were built on the NT 4 code, but they
intended 2000 to be the first unified version for business and home
use, and even when it wasn't, it would be supported long after 9x/Me,
and with service packs was more or less equivalent to XP, so it made
sense to name it 2000.

Umm, no. 2000 is NT4 base code. XP and above is NT5 to NT6 base code.
2000 started life as a business OS, and, MS made some attempts to give
it some user options in the sense of better gaming support. XP however
is what 2000 wasn't able to do for the business and home users.

The XP and 2000 service packs weren't that much alike either, 2000
officially had four of them, XP has three, technically.





--
Trust yourself. You know more than you think you do.

Joel
Sat, 11 Jul 2020
20:54:38 GMT in alt.computer.workshop, wrote:

Snit wrote:

2000 and XP, and Server 2003, were built on the NT 4 code, but
they intended 2000 to be the first unified version for business
and home use, and even when it wasn't, it would be supported
long after 9x/Me, and with service packs was more or less
equivalent to XP, so it made sense to name it 2000.

I think that is more to the point than just marketing... they
wanted 2000 to be more than it was.


That was the plan, yeah, but there were issues with running DOS
games, drivers, etc., that made them realize that they hadn't yet
achieved what XP ultimately became.

Umm, no. They knew perfectly well it would have issues with some DOS
based software since it was emulating the entire DOS environment for
them and had no actual DOS under it's hood, unlike the windows 3x/9x
family.

They had to release 2000 as kind of an interim version.

2000 wasn't released as a stop gap between NT4 and XP, no.

But the second service pack for 2000, released around the same time
as XP, corrected that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_2000

Windows 2000 is a business-oriented operating system that was
produced by Microsoft in the United States and was released as part
of the Windows NT family of operating systems. It was succeeded by
Windows XP in 2001, releasing to manufacturing on December 15, 1999
[2] and being officially released to retail on February 17, 2000.[3]
It is the successor to Windows NT 4.0.

Four editions of Windows 2000 were released: Professional, Server,
Advanced Server, and Datacenter Server;[6] the latter was both
released to manufacturing and launched months after the other
editions.[7] While each edition of Windows 2000 was targeted at a
different market, they shared a core set of features, including many
system utilities such as the Microsoft Management Console and
standard system administration applications.

Windows 2000 introduces NTFS 3.0,[8] Encrypting File System,[9] as
well as basic and dynamic disk storage.[10] Support for people with
disabilities was improved over Windows NT 4.0 with a number of new
assistive technologies,[11] and Microsoft increased support for
different languages[12] and locale information.[13] The Windows 2000
Server family has additional features, most notably the introduction
of Active Directory,[14] which in the years following became a widely
used directory service in business environments.

Microsoft marketed Windows 2000 as the most secure Windows version
ever at the time;[15] however, it became the target of a number of
high-profile virus attacks such as Code Red[16] and Nimda.[17] For
ten years after its release, it continued to receive patches for
security vulnerabilities nearly every month until reaching the end of
its lifecycle on July 13, 2010.[5]

Windows 2000 is the last version of Microsoft Windows to display the
"Windows NT" designation, and the last version where the desktop and
server versions of Windows shared the same name. It is succeeded by
Windows XP (released in October 2001) and Windows Server 2003
(released in April 2003).

I got a custom built computer a couple months after the release of
2000 with it preinstalled, and it was wonderful, coming from Win98.
The new machine was faster and had more RAM, sure, but the
difference in terms of using it was that I was running a "real"
OS.

There was a bit more than that in the differences between them, but,
if you didn't notice, no real biggie.





--
Get thee down. Be thou funky.

Mark Lloyd
Fri, 10 Jul 2020 20:22:27 GMT in alt.computer.workshop, wrote:

[snip]

I never could find that "worst" version of ME. What I had was
slightly better than 98, but only slightly.

Actually, the issues that showed up with ME were mostly due to faulty
ram, and/or ram that barely made spec requirements and was otherwise
shoddy. ME used a higher range in the upper ram area, and if you had
****/low quality ram, or the wrong stuff outright for your board but
it posted, ME was unforgiving.

A lot of the blame on ME instability can be squarely placed on the
**** poor matched hardware, specifically the ram and mainboard. In
90% of all Me systems I observed with problems, especially when they
ran fine win 98 but turned to **** with Me was ram issues. 98 would
tolerate the user ****up, but Me wouldn't. Mostly clones that people
would build them selves, but compaq with their low end home user junk
would pull the same **** as well as Dell and various other big name
companies at the time. Use cheap ram, get bad results if MS makes
some changes in the OS; which is what they did with Me.

When setting up an old system recently, I chose ME over 98 but
only because ME comes with the USB storage driver, making setup a
little easier.

Me still has the same issue as the other win9x family though, it
cannot physically run non stop without a reset/restart for longer
than 43.2 (I think it is) days in a row. It'll hard lock.





--
Do you have such a thing?

Joel
Fri, 10 Jul 2020
17:55:38 GMT in alt.computer.workshop, wrote:

"Carlos E.R." wrote:

As for Windows Me, the idea was to redesign the 9x line to be
more like 2000, for example it included the new TCP/IP in 2000
(and in 95, 98, 98 SE and NT 4, it had been abysmal, so that was
one thing in Me's favor). The problem was that for many if not
most computers, Me was far less stable than 98 SE. There were
exceptions to that, but it was released with a lot of flaws.

I bought a desktop computer at the time that came with Windows Me
- I did not find it specially faulty. Later I upgraded it to Linux
and double booted.


Yeah, a friend of mine bought a computer that came with WinMe, and
for him it was just fine. But others had serious problems with
it. Kind of strange, and yet we're seeing similar issues with
Win10 today - an update works for some people and royally screws
up with others.


With ME, it wasn't ms update issues borking the machines nearly as
much as it was machines that ran a previous copy of windows, with
mismatched/poor quality ram than were upgraded or clean installed to
windows ME. those systems would give you problems, because the ram
was ****, and ME wasn't as forgiving with **** hardware as
windows98/98se was.



--
Cats must hide in the kitchen drawers and jump out at Mom.

Diesel wrote:
Joel
Sat, 11 Jul 2020
20:54:38 GMT in alt.computer.workshop, wrote:
Snit wrote:

2000 and XP, and Server 2003, were built on the NT 4 code, but
they intended 2000 to be the first unified version for business
and home use, and even when it wasn't, it would be supported
long after 9x/Me, and with service packs was more or less
equivalent to XP, so it made sense to name it 2000.

I think that is more to the point than just marketing... they
wanted 2000 to be more than it was.

That was the plan, yeah, but there were issues with running DOS
games, drivers, etc., that made them realize that they hadn't yet
achieved what XP ultimately became.

Umm, no. They knew perfectly well it would have issues with some DOS
based software since it was emulating the entire DOS environment for
them and had no actual DOS under it's hood, unlike the windows 3x/9x
family.


You're a ****ing idiot, you know that? Do you not realize that when
XP was released they *had* developed a way to support the legacy
software necessary for it to replace Win9x/Me? And that they
backported it to 2000 via the second service pack?

Before you get smart-mouthed, learn what the **** you're talking
about, punk.


They had to release 2000 as kind of an interim version.

2000 wasn't released as a stop gap between NT4 and XP, no.


That isn't what I said, bitch. I know that it was released as an
upgrade to NT, duh. But it had not achieved what they initially
intended it to, that XP ultimately did. Grow a ****ing brain.


But the second service pack for 2000, released around the same time
as XP, corrected that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_2000

snip irrelevancy


So just copying and pasting Wikipedia qualifies as a response to what
i wrote? Man are you a moron.


I got a custom built computer a couple months after the release of
2000 with it preinstalled, and it was wonderful, coming from Win98.
The new machine was faster and had more RAM, sure, but the
difference in terms of using it was that I was running a "real"
OS.

There was a bit more than that in the differences between them, but,
if you didn't notice, no real biggie.


Read what the **** I said, you imbecile. I didn't go into *detail*
about the differences, that doesn't mean I didn't "notice" them, you
reject.

--
Joel Crump

Diesel wrote:

2000 and XP, and Server 2003, were built on the NT 4 code, but they
intended 2000 to be the first unified version for business and home
use, and even when it wasn't, it would be supported long after 9x/Me,
and with service packs was more or less equivalent to XP, so it made
sense to name it 2000.

Umm, no. 2000 is NT4 base code. XP and above is NT5 to NT6 base code.


Hahahaha, you are lost, fool. 2000 was numbered 5.0, XP 5.1. That
isn't relevant to the fact that they were built on the codebase of NT
4. After Server 2003, they scrapped the entire codebase, leading to
Vista being essentially a beta when it was released.


2000 started life as a business OS, and, MS made some attempts to give
it some user options in the sense of better gaming support. XP however
is what 2000 wasn't able to do for the business and home users.

The XP and 2000 service packs weren't that much alike either, 2000
officially had four of them, XP has three, technically.


Heh, you are clueless.

--
Joel Crump

Diesel wrote:

Yeah, a friend of mine bought a computer that came with WinMe, and
for him it was just fine. But others had serious problems with
it. Kind of strange, and yet we're seeing similar issues with
Win10 today - an update works for some people and royally screws
up with others.

With ME, it wasn't ms update issues borking the machines nearly as
much as it was machines that ran a previous copy of windows, with
mismatched/poor quality ram than were upgraded or clean installed to
windows ME. those systems would give you problems, because the ram
was ****, and ME wasn't as forgiving with **** hardware as
windows98/98se was.


That makes little to no sense, because nearly every WinMe machine came
with Me preinstalled. I literally knew zero people who upgraded from
98 to Me. And I would love to hear you explain how "poor quality RAM"
would be OK under one OS but not another. Very bizarre claim.

--
Joel Crump

On 12/07/2020 13.12, Joel wrote:
Diesel wrote:

....
You're a ****ing idiot, you know that? Do you not realize that when
.....

Before you get smart-mouthed, learn what the **** you're talking
about, punk.
....



That isn't what I said, bitch. I know that it was released as an

....

Read what the **** I said, you imbecile. I didn't go into *detail*


Sorry, but with that foul language I have to ignore your post and flag
your mails for the future. You may have interesting things to say, but I
do not want to read that sort of language.

--
Cheers, Carlos.

"Carlos E.R." wrote:

Sorry, but with that foul language I have to ignore your post and flag
your mails for the future. You may have interesting things to say, but I
do not want to read that sort of language.


I'm sorry for that, but Diesel really was trying to get smart, while
not actually being smart. I don't take kindly to being talked down to
when I was correct, and he isn't.

--
Joel Crump

"Joel" wrote

| That makes little to no sense, because nearly every WinMe machine came
| with Me preinstalled. I literally knew zero people who upgraded from
| 98 to Me.

I did. They were selling upgrades for $10. I don't
remember big problems with ME. The only instability
I saw was with Explorer. Once in awhile the desktop
would go white with a warning in red. Once in awhile
items in a folder window seemed to slide off to the
side. But no big deal. It was just typical MS design.
They change lots of little things with each system, for
no good reason. Some of those changes break things.
Apparently there was a new Active Desktop "team"
and they wanted to reaarange the chairs. The same
happened with NT6: Same basic Explorer but lots of
tiny, meaningless changes.

Personally I think the idea of lemons and peaches is
overblown. MS needed to come out with new systems
periodically, to sell more product and satisfy their hardware
partners. ME was fine, but irrelevant. It was also fatally cute,
with the "Me" marketing theme. Whether they called it
"Windows Me" or "Millennium Edition", both were embarassingly
silly themes.

Vista was too bloated
for the hardware, and it introduced "lackey mode" file
restrictions as default, difficult to bypass. That's what gave
it a bad name. 8 introduced Metro madness, again making
it difficult to bypass. The sheer irrelevance of Metro was
maddening. So 8 got a bad name.

Much of the reputation problem comes from MS themselves.
They're the only company I know that markets new product
by saying their last product was junk and needs to be
thrown away. And in many cases they've actually left
those alleged lemon systems out of OS listings and update
announcements, leaving their paying customers holding
the bag.

I'm glad I don't use Vista, only because of file restrictions
and bloat. I rarely use 7, for the same reason. Why is 7
better? Mainly because UAC makes it a bit smoother. And
because by the time 7 came out there was hardware that
could handle such a pig. It's not really different from Vista.

I'm writing this on XP. Why? Because it's the last version
that does what I tell it to do without arguing. It's not
spyware. It supports all the software I want. And the
whole system, with software installed, is less than 2 GB, making
backup easy. Though to be fair, XP needs a lot of fixing
to be such a smooth running peach. Like getting rid of
the GUI skins and removing system file protection.

To my mind, the big changes in Windows over
the years have been mostly from MS marketing and
strategy. Win10 brought in the idea that renting software
and not controlling your device is normal. And each version
usually brings in some new hardware support, some new
system functions, some new API wrappers for convenience.
But the main point of Windows is to be a *platform* for
software. In most cases, the version is not so important
for that. The biggest differences have been in Microsoft's
somewhat whimsical decisions about what
"paradigm" Windows should represent. And since Win98
with Active Desktop, they've been trying to figure a way
to sell out their customers, on top of the software cost.
For more than 20 years they haven't been happy to just
sell a decent product and have a monopoly. They keep
tweaking the paradigm to steal money. Bill Gates
"brilliantly" foresaw the sleaze possibilities the Internet
would bring and raced to cash in. But it's never quite worked.
Apple vacuums out their customers' wallets by making
irrestistible products that anyone can use. Google vacuums
out everyone's wallet by making very simple, functional
products for free. That's why everyone uses gmail. It's
just so easy. And the unprecedented sleaze of Google is
mostly invisible to the average person.

Microsoft always start out with their plan to vacuum
out wallets. The product seems to be an afterthought. So
it often fails. Gates's "brilliance" gave us Active Desktop ads,
Passport spyware, Hailstorm idiocy (who thought of that
name?!), pointless SPOT watches, useless Metro trinket apps,
and the similar Windows Store apps. All of them were
interesting scams, many were ahead of their time, but
they were all only scams intended to vacuum out
wallets. So they all failed. Microsoft were not thinking
of what their customers needed with any of those efforts.
Their main product for years -- their only profit driver --
was the dual monopoly of Windows and MS Office. Today,
surpisingly, they're getting a lot of profit from Azure web
hosting.

But I suspect that internally the Microsofties are
seeing it differently. They see the landscape changing and
feel they have to keep up. It's not enough to make billions
creating a solid OS for productivity computers running
productivity software. Like Google and Apple, they're
always driven to make yet another buck, by hook or by
crook. So they're trying to cash in on the massively
profitable app scam that's been so good to Apple and
Google. But once again, they were so busy designing
their wallet vacuum that they neglected to notice that
they didn't actually have any venue for their apps!

On 12/07/2020 12:59, Joel wrote:
"Carlos E.R." wrote:

Sorry, but with that foul language I have to ignore your post and flag
your mails for the future. You may have interesting things to say, but I
do not want to read that sort of language.


I'm sorry for that, but Diesel really was trying to get smart, while
not actually being smart. I don't take kindly to being talked down to
when I was correct, and he isn't.

I very much hope that Carlos will accept your apology, Joel.

The poster to whom you responded did rather provoke you!

Stay safe. :-)

David_B wrote:
On 12/07/2020 12:59, Joel wrote:
"Carlos E.R." wrote:

Sorry, but with that foul language I have to ignore your post and flag
your mails for the future. You may have interesting things to say, but I
do not want to read that sort of language.

I'm sorry for that, but Diesel really was trying to get smart, while
not actually being smart. I don't take kindly to being talked down to
when I was correct, and he isn't.

I very much hope that Carlos will accept your apology, Joel.


I wouldn't blame someone for feeling that way about the language, it
is something people can be sensitive to, and I understand that.


The poster to whom you responded did rather provoke you!


Yeah, what little I've read in the endless threads where he trolls
made me not really want to hear his condescending crap in this thread.


Stay safe. :-)


I'm glad that you are doing well!

--
Joel Crump

"Mayayana" wrote:

| That makes little to no sense, because nearly every WinMe machine came
| with Me preinstalled. I literally knew zero people who upgraded from
| 98 to Me.

I did. They were selling upgrades for $10.


I already had Win2000 when Me was released, but I did know multiple
people who were sticking with 98, having heard bad things about Me.


I don't
remember big problems with ME. The only instability
I saw was with Explorer. Once in awhile the desktop
would go white with a warning in red. Once in awhile
items in a folder window seemed to slide off to the
side. But no big deal. It was just typical MS design.
They change lots of little things with each system, for
no good reason. Some of those changes break things.
Apparently there was a new Active Desktop "team"
and they wanted to reaarange the chairs.


Interesting. I had very little firsthand experience with Me, my mom
did buy a laptop that came with it, but I avoided touching it before
it was upgraded to XP.


snip

I'm writing this on XP. Why? Because it's the last version
that does what I tell it to do without arguing. It's not
spyware. It supports all the software I want. And the
whole system, with software installed, is less than 2 GB, making
backup easy. Though to be fair, XP needs a lot of fixing
to be such a smooth running peach. Like getting rid of
the GUI skins and removing system file protection.


Yeah, XP in classic theme mode was a really lean and mean system. I
moved on to 7 when it was released, but XP served me well before it.

--
Joel Crump