Microsoft ended its support for Windows XP officially more than a month ago on April 8, 2014. This made a large number of users to switch to the latest version of Windows, but still a wide portion of users are using Microsoft oldest and most widely used operating system, despite not receiving security updates.
While some companies and organizations who were not able to migrate their operating system's running Windows XP to another operating system before the support phase ended, are still receiving updates by paying Microsoft for the security patches and updates.
Now a relatively simple method has emerged as a trick for the XP users which makes it possible to receive Windows XP security updates for the next five years i.e. until April 2019.
It makes use of updates for Windows Embedded POSReady 2009 based on Windows XP Service Pack 3, because the security updates which are being released for POSReady 2009 are inevitably the same updates Microsoft would have rolled out for its Windows XP, if it was still supporting XP Operating System.
Windows Embedded POSReady 2009 is the operating system installed in "point-of-sale" (POS) systems such as restaurant machine, ticket machines or other customized version of Windows Embedded systems. POS machine most likely uses the XP operating system, therefore receives the same updates that are delivered by Microsoft for the officially unsupported version of Windows XP.
You are not allowed to directly install these Windows updates for your OS. In order to download new security updates for your Windows XP, you just need to perform a simple intervention into the Windows registration database.
STEPS TO FOLLOW:
- Open Notepad and create a new file.
- Add Below given code to it:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\WPA\PosReady]
"Installed"=dword:00000001
- Save file as .reg extension and run it by double clicks.
- Once executed, you will find lots of pending updates in your Windows Action Center.
Because the extended support for Windows Embedded POSReady 2009 systems ends after 5 years, Microsoft will continue to deliver new security updates and patches for this version of its embedded operating system till April 9th, 2019, so users can use this trick to get security updates of Windows XP for another five years.
Important Note for our Readers - Despite receiving security updates for Windows XP by using such tricks, it is not possible to secure the complete system appropriately. So we highly recommend all of you to upgrade your operating system to the latest versions, i.e. Windows 7 or 8 or any Linux Distro.