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February 7, 2014
PC

Help your friends and family get off Windows XP

Today marks 60 days until the end of support for Windows XP and we need your help spreading the word to ensure people are safe and secure on modern up-to-date PCs. As a reader of this blog, it’s unlikely you are running Windows XP on your PC. However, you may know someone who is and have even served as their tech support. To help, we have created a special page on Windows.com that explains what “end of support” means for people still on Windows XP and their options to stay protected after support ends on April 8th:

Upgrade their current PC if it meets the system requirements for Windows 8.1. They can download and run the Windows Upgrade Assistant on their current PC to check and see if it can run Windows 8.1 and then follow the steps in this tutorial to upgrade (including backing up all their data). They will not be able to keep any files, settings, or applications when upgrading Windows XP, so they will need to back up all their files and locate any installation discs (or purchase confirmation emails) prior to doing the upgrade.

Get a new PC. The easiest path to Windows 8.1 is with new devices and there are offers and deals from many retailers to help people get a new device. They can stay up to date on the latest offers on Windows PCs and tablets via the Windows Buying Guide and learn how to choose a new PC. Once they choose and buy a new device, they can transfer their files from their old PC by copying them to an external hard drive, USB flash drive, or cloud storage like SkyDrive*. And they can watch these videos to get familiar with Windows 8.1.

We hope that this end of support page for Windows XP on Windows.com and all the resources there is helpful to you and can be something you can use to help your friends and family get off Windows XP. As we get close to April 8th, we’ll continue to publish blog posts about the latest offers on new devices and resources for to help people get off Windows XP.

*There is no desktop client available for SkyDrive on Windows XP to sync your files however you can upload files to SkyDrive.com through the website (please note, with IE8 on Windows XP you can’t upload files larger than 300MB).