Microsoft drops official technical support for older products on community forums

By Dan Thorp-Lancaster
last updated

Microsoft's community-driven Answers forums are turning off the light on official technical support for several of the company's older products.

If you head to the Microsoft Answers forum for any expecting official technical support for an older Microsoft product, you'll soon be out of luck. The company announced today (opens in new tab) that it will no longer be providing technical support from Microsoft agents for a slew of products, including older versions of Windows and Office, along with Microsoft Band, Zune, and older Surface PCs (via MSPU).

Here's a look at all of the products that will be "discontinued across different forums in the community" as of July, 2018:

  • Windows 7, 8.1, 8.1 RT
  • Microsoft Security Essentials
  • Internet Explorer 10
  • Office 2010, 2013
  • Surface Pro, Surface Pro 2, Surface RT, Surface 2
  • Microsoft Band – this topic will be locked. Users are invited to participate in Microsoft Band 2 topic.
  • Mobile devices forum – Microsoft support will continue in "Other Windows mobile devices" topic
  • Zune – this topic will be locked, but will remain available for browsing

According to Microsoft, the move is being made to "shift" its support scope. Staff will still moderate the forums, and community members are asked to continue to participate in topics that remain open. However, Microsoft says there will no longer be "proactive reviews, monitoring, answering or answer marking of questions."

Dan Thorp-Lancaster
Dan Thorp-Lancaster

Dan Thorp-Lancaster is the Editor in Chief for Windows Central. He began working with Windows Central as a news writer in 2014 and is obsessed with tech of all sorts. You can follow Dan on Twitter @DthorpL and Instagram @heyitsdtl. Got a hot tip? Send it to daniel.thorp-lancaster@futurenet.com.

8 Comments
  • 😐
  • It was useless anyways. You were better off going to reddit for answers.
  • Have you tried running sfc /scannow?
  • They were dead long before any official stamp.
  • Their so called technical support was a total junk anyway...
  • While their support forums are a great idea in concept, in execution the majority of answers provided by Microsoft support staff were useless. The quality solutions tend to be provided by other users, although once in a great while you would find a gem provided by official staff. As for "shifting scope" by discontinuing support for old products, totally understandable, though Surface Pro and Pro 2 are still perfectly capable devices with plenty of life left in them. I'll probably turn my SP1 off for the last time in a couple years. By then we'll have convinced ourselves that we need a 16 GB machine with an 8K display just to answer email, click through memes on social media, and visit the same sites we visit now.
  • They are moving their forums to GitHub.
  • I'm a little surprised the Zune still had active support. I wouldn't have expected that.