Catalyst Development

Microsoft has announced the end of technical support for Windows 2000 and Windows XP SP2 on July 13, 2010. This means that after this date, paid support and operating system updates from Microsoft, including security updates, will no longer be available for those platforms. It’s recommended that you upgrade these platforms as soon as possible. For developers using Windows XP, all you need to do is install Service Pack 3 (SP3) to continue receiving updates for the operating system. You can download SP3 through Windows Update, or from the Microsoft Download Center.

Although Microsoft is no longer supporting these platforms, Catalyst has no plans to discontinue support for Windows 2000 or Windows XP SP2 at this time. However, it is important to consider that the inability to obtain support from Microsoft for these platforms may impact our ability to provide support to our customers. If a customer reports a problem on either of these platforms, we will follow this process:

1. If a problem is reported on Windows 2000 or Windows XP SP2, we will first attempt to reproduce that problem on a supported version of Windows. Typically, that will be on both a development system running Windows 7 and a test system running Windows XP SP3. If the problem can be reproduced, then it’s not likely to be a platform-specific issue and we’ll proceed towards resolving the issue.

2. If the problem cannot be reproduced on a supported version of Windows, we’ll attempt to reproduce it on either Windows 2000 or Windows XP SP2, depending on which platform the customer is experiencing the problem. If we can reproduce the problem, then we’ll determine the nature of the issue. For example, if the problem can be isolated as a certain network function that doesn’t have the same functionality as on supported versions of Windows, we’ll determine what change or work-around can be made to correct the problem.

3. If it is determined that the problem is specific to an unsupported version of Windows and is related to something that cannot be addressed directly in our code, such as a system configuration issue or a problem with a particular driver, then we will do our best to provide a work-around solution for the customer as a temporary measure until the customer and/or end-user can migrate to a supported platform.

While we have no immediate plans to discontinue support for these platforms, it is also important to note that future versions of our products may not include support for them, or certain features may not be available when new functionality is added to our products. If you haven’t done so already, we recommend that you make plans to migrate any of your end-users to a supported version of Windows as soon as possible. This is particularly important for any systems which have Internet connectivity because the lack of security updates for these platforms has the potential to make those systems increasingly vulnerable to malicious software and denial-of-service attacks.