Beverly has a question about when support will end for her Windows operating system. “When will Windows 7 Home Premium support end?”
Windows operating systems receive 5 years of mainstream support from the time of release and 10 years of extended support.
Mainstream support means that Microsoft is actively developing new features and you can get free tech support from Microsoft as well as security support. Extended support means the OS receives bug patches and security updates, but nothing more. Windows 7 was released in 2010, so it received mainstream support until January 13, 2015 and will receive extended support until January 14, 2020.
But there is a way to extend security support for your Windows 7 PC. If you take the free upgrade to Windows 10 (available until July of 2016), you’ll extend your mainstream support until at least 2020 and your security support until 2025. I say “at least” because it’s probable that Microsoft may change to the Apple model of providing free gradual updates to the Windows 10 OS for home users instead of the old model of coming out with a new expensive operating system every few years.
~ Cynthia
I have both good and bad results from Windows 10. It works just fine on my Dell 3531 which came with a version of Windows 8. But my Alienware M17x-R3 worked better under Windows 7. Visio 2013 won’t open a file but will open it under Windows 7 on my Dell Inspiron 1501. Windows 10 on my Alienware keeps losing the 1600×900 resolution AMD display drivers and occasionally uses the Microsoft basic 1024×768. Also the start menu is occasionally nonresponsive. Although Windows 10 has been on the Alienware for over a month, I would like to know the best way to revert back to Windows 7 Ultimate. I shall keep Windows 10 on my Dell 3531 and Windows 7 on my Inspiron 1501 (Microsoft refused to upgrade the 1501 which was good!) I have your Windows 10 Ultimate Guide but could not find anything about reversion from Windows 10 back to Windows 7. Thank you for your help! Sincerely, (Mr.) Gayle Lee Fairless, fairless@ieee.org
In effect what you are doing is indirectly coaxing us to upgrade to Windows 10. What with Windows privacy issues still unresolved and Microsoft thrusting so-called updates down our throats with no choice to install them or not, an interesting alternative would be to install Zorin 9.0 OS which is free and user friendly.
Hi Cynthia
I am now confused. If I am running Win 7 and want to extend support to 2025 are you saying that I must update to Win 10? Surely this will mean losing Win 7
Derrick
As I said, you would need to upgrade to Windows 10 to extend your security support. If you don’t upgrade, you can certainly wait to upgrade until the security support expires for Windows 7.
What about Windows Vista? Can I upgrade to Windows 10?
Hi Cynthia. I’ve got the same question as Dereck and I didn’t catch your reply.
If I understand properly, you wrote if we want to get extended support for Windows 7, we have to upgrade to Windows 10. How can we then use Win 7 if Win 10 is installed?
The purpose being we want to use Win 7. Not Win 10. Sorry for being a bit slow but I don’t get it.
Christian