Microsoft has ended support for Windows NT 4.0 Workstation. This product will be 7 years old on July 29. Support for Windows NT 4.0 Server will end on December 31, 2004. However, service packs and non-security related hotfixes will no longer be produced after December 31, 2003. Support for Windows 98 is scheduled to end on January 16, 2004.
What does this all mean? In the short term not a lot. The biggest concern is that security hotfixes will no longer be produced for these products. This will leave networks with potential security holes. Most end users do not contact Microsoft for operating system support, so this really won't affect them. However, over the longer term these products will no longer support technologies as they become available. Hardware vendors will no longer create drivers for these products to allow their hardware to run in these machines. For instance, you will not be able to install the latest and greatest video card in your workstation if the current one fails. Over time getting the older products that will run in these older systems will become difficult if not impossible.
The most critical concern of course is with servers. Your data becomes highly at risk on a server with an obsolete operating system. Should the server fail, at the very least there may be substantial down time while the older hardware items are hunted down and at the worst you may not be able to get the server back up!
This does not mean to panic. There is still time. However, if you are running Windows NT 4.0 or Windows 98 on your workstations it is time to begin looking at upgrading them as soon as you can. If you are running Windows NT 4.0 or earlier on your servers it is now time to begin evaluating what will be involved with moving to a new server environment.
Want to know what's involved and what the benefits of moving to a newer operating system are? Give us a call!
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