What happens after Windows XP support ends?

[Marsha K.]

I'm not sure I understand how drop box will function or not after doom day in August. My computer is a Windows XP. I cannot afford a new computer at this time. Does the August date mean that I will not be able to access my files that are not synced to my computer? Will I be able to download files? My desktop icon will no longer function?

[Richard P.]

Dropbox is dropping XP support because it has started to cost them more to support it than the revenue they get from supporting it.  Simple really.

And I disagree with your comment about Microsoft "creating obsolescence", if you look at *any* of the alternative operating systems, old operating systems get dropped by their creators.

Apple won't support anything older than OSX 10.11.

If you try and use a 2.2 Linux kernel you are on your own for getting stuff to work.

The world moves on, software moves on, and if you dont move on with it then you get left in the cold.  Its got nothing to do with deliberately creating obsolescence and everything to do with dumping baggage that just gets in the way.

[Carl G.5]

The reality of life is that XP is about 15 years old...  If it were an automobile it would probably be in a junkyard by now.  Chrome has been complaining about not supporting XP for months now, but as long as I can still use it to browse, upload and download with it, where's the problem?  Due to this horrible economy, I'm also stuck with XP for the time being, and probably for at least a few years into the future.  Complain about that instead...  to your congressmen!  

Accessing, uploading and downloading files from a browser rather than from the DropBox App is really not a big problem at all.   I have no problem with doing it through Chrome and am simply grateful that I have free storage online with DropBox for files that I wish to share with friends which are too large to e-mail.  Don't look a gift horse in the mouth...  Just appreciate the gift!  

[Cathy S.6]

Although I understand that the cost factor it doesn't make me feel any less disappointed.  I for one cannot afford to upgrade my home computer which I use for work as well.  I also have no problem using the web to pc download/upload option and will be directed that way come the end of the month. I have to find a positive in this situation and being that our company uses the Dropbox for Business Enterprise I will no longer need to have space on my personal hard drive allocated to work.

[Carl G.5]

Hi Cathy,  As an experiment, I just uploaded an Excel file to see it I could edit it from DropBox via my web browser.  Unfortunately, no...  I thought perhaps it would open with Excel on my computer, but no.  I could however, view it.  Since you can play Videos and Mp3s directly in DropBox, I suppose they must have a built-in player (one which includes the video codec I use which is pretty cool). The only workaround I can see for dealing with work files is to download the files as required, make the necessary changes and upload them back.  Then you still don't need to store them all on your home PC, but then you have the download and upload time.  Fortunately, most Excel or Word Files are fairly small.  But hey, that's still better than 35 years ago when almost all documents were created on typewriters.  I remember doing work drawings with pen and ink.  Cut/Copy Paste was literally Cut/Copy Paste, with transparent tape... and typos were fixed with "Correct-Type".   One consolation:  Microsoft says Windows 10 will be the last version and the only changes will be via updates.  I personally find that hard to believe...  If PCs go to 128 bits, I don't see how that could possibly work, but maybe the Windows 10 architecture is flexible enough to allow for that kind of hardware change.  I've never looked into that.  Final thought:  If they fully expect you to work at home, they might want to consider providing you the tools to do so (or a pay increase to cover it).  

[Robert S.33]

I bought an annual subscription a few months ago and now that you are drupping support for Win XP, which  I like and use as my primary desktop PC, I would like to cancel but would also like a refund prorated on the remainder of my subscription.  When I subscribed to Dropbox I planned to use it for the whole year on my XP computer.  Now I cannot do this and I was bit warned you were going to drop support for my operating system.  I will use my refund to purchase one of your compteitors products which will continue to run on XP

[Cathy S.6]

Carl G.  Thanks for your input and test.  Yes you are correct if they expect me to work from home they should supply the tools.  However they don't expect it, I prefer it and if I had my choice I would do it every day.  I'll live, but I am not happy about it.  Not everyone can or wants to migrate from XP to 7 or even 10.  Especially finding out that it's not upgrading but wiping and installing.  Too many years of collected data and programs stored doesn't make it worth the effort.

[SPH L.]

Cathy S. Not everyone can or wants to migrate from XP to 7 or even 10.  Especially finding out that it's not upgrading but wiping and installing.  Too many years of collected data and programs stored doesn't make it worth the effort.

This 200%!!!

IF, and that's a big gotcha if, Microsoft had provided a proper upgrade path from XP to 7, I'm sure many more users who weren't locked into XP by an app would have updated.. but since they didn't, those users are pretty much stuck on XP until their PCs die.

[K.M. R.]

"SUPER USERS" PLEASE DO NOT REPLY.  But please tell the gods at Dropbox that you worship about this thread.

Dropbox, I believe you have miscalculated how much loyalty and good will you could create by finding a way to continue support for the desktop client under Windows XP, even if minus whatever "bells and whistles" future versions won't be available to us.

In the other thread on this subject, the last post suggests a small fee for XP users.  You have the better part of a month ... see if there is a way to cover whatever costs are associated with supporting the last version of the client under XP and leave us be.

If, as has been suggested, the other cloud services go down the same path of only supporting what Microsoft says they should support, think what value there is in cornering this niche market.  You've hopefully read all the posts here that point out the reality that no matter what Microsoft wanted to have happen, there is still a significant XP installed user base.  And we're not going away.

It is obvious that we all believe Dropbox is the superior service or we wouldn't be so upset by your decision.  I'm sure all of us have recommended Dropbox many times to friends, family and professional colleagues.  Positive word of mouth is said to be the most powerful testimonial any product can receive and most companies go out of their way to keep that positive.

Presume that for every post here there are several users who won't, but will be just as likely to grumble to those same friends, family and professional colleagues about your decision.  You're turning a significant amount of positive "street cred" into a negative with this one move.  Is that what you really want?

[Rich]

@Carl: You can open Microsoft Office files online using the Office Online integration. If you choose not to do that, you would need to download the file, make any necessary changes, save it locally, then re-upload the changed file back to Dropbox.

@Robert: You can downgrade your account at any time so it will not auto-renew at the end of your term. In doing so, you'll keep your Pro status until the subscription runs out. As per the Dropbox Terms, Dropbox does not issue refunds unless legally required to do so.

@K.M. R.: Dropbox will not be reversing their decision on this. It's happening. As has been described in many, MANY posts over the past several months that this has been discussed, they cannot continue to support Dropbox on XP. It is not just a matter of allowing the older clients to continue connecting. As the servers are upgraded and improved upon, older operating systems will be UNABLE to connect. The newer development tools and libraries that are used to maintain Dropbox simply do not have support for older operating systems. In order for Dropbox to continue supporting XP (and Mac OS X 10.4, .5, etc., which were killed off for the same reasons), they would need to maintain two completely separately environments. They would need to develop two completely separate server infrastructures. They would need to have multiple groups to support each environment. It's just not feasible to do that.

XP is dead, and any service or software that still supports it (of which the numbers are dwindling) likely won't do so for much longer.

And before anyone jumps on me for being anti-XP, I still maintain about a dozen XP systems that handle various tasks, some of which cannot be upgraded due to the hardware that they're connected to (inspection machines, etc.). So I feel your pain, but there's nothing that can be done about it.

[Carl G.5]

A bit of a long story, but here goes...  I currently have an XP machine at home with all my favorite applications for recording music and creating videos.  I never use it online, so the only updates on it are those which I needed to install my softwares, most of which were bundled with the install discs.  It runs like a well oiled machine.  At work I'm also still using XP, and say what you will about security for XP, I've actually had much better performance since Microsoft stopped pushing XP Updates.  It was as if my computer was a cat...  It spent more time preening than doing anything useful, so I shut off automatic updates.  I have a work provided subscription to Norton 360 and also have a free version of Avast on it.  And NO they do not conflict, nor have I incurred any viruses, although Norton will occasionally complain about having another antivirus program installed.  But, I've found that Avast actually catches more real malware than Norton does, whereas Norton seems to catch things on my work applications like AutoCAD which I had to go and roll back to regain functionality.  There's another computer at work which I've been monitoring since it's user was let go, and automatic updates is still active on that. Actually, every so often, it will still do a Microsoft update...  I'm not sure what's up with that...  Apparently Microsoft still has a few updates for XP???  

I also have a Windows 7 machine I inherited from my Son after he upgraded from Windows 7 to Windows 10.  It got corrupted a few days after the upgrade and would not roll back.  It just came up with a blue screen saying it could not restore and that the hard drive was bad.  So he went out and got a new PC with Windows 10 already on it from the factory and gave me the old one for parts thinking it was toast.  It has a souped up power supply and very nice high performance video card.  So I tried installing XP on it temporarily, thinking I'd at least see what the actual status of the hard drive was...  XP installed fine and worked well, but oddly the primary hard drive was mapped to H:...   So when going to install any very old software it doesn't play nice, expecting to install to C:.  After a little investigation I figured out that HP has card readers which in the event of a restore are mapped to C:, D:, E:, F: and G:...  Which puts your hard drive at H: and makes it impossible to restore!  In order to have the hard drive mapped to C: as it should be, you need to open it up and pull the cable to the card reader loose until after you restore your operating system.  No one tells you this stuff...  You have to just be persistant and figure it out on your own!  And of course, HP not only didn't supply a restore disc for the operating system, but does not have it on their website for download.  So after looking around elsewhere, I found a ISO file for an HP OEM WIN 7 install for the correct model and burned it to a DVD using his new machine. So I went ahead and re-installed that, put in the code from the machine's label, then went to the HP site for the device drivers (which they at least do have), and now it works perfectly.  While I was at it, I tried adding Microsoft Virtual PC and XP Mode.  After goofing around for quite a few days, I finally found out that you have to go into the BIOS and select "support virtualization", save and exit.  Then Virtualization and XP mode installed just fine.  So now in addition to my original XP machine, I have a WIN 7 machine with XP Mode and have installed all my favorite softwares on it.  So it one dies, I still have the other one.  The only cheesy thing about it is, if you do not have Windows 7 Professional or Ultimate, you can't add XP Mode.  How cheap!  If you don't have the extra money to buy a PC with Windows Professional or Ultimate, you sure don't have the money to buy all new software.  I was just fortunate that my Son went top of the line on this machine since he games a lot.  

Then to make the story even more interesting, a fellow I know at work had his HP Windows 7 machine die a few days after upgrading to Windows 10.  It just came up with a blue screen saying the hard drive was bad, etc.  I told him about needing to pull the cable or you can't get it to restore, and he said, "I don't know anything about this stuff, would you take a look at it?"  So he brought it in, I pulled the cable, and it came up on Windows 10.  The DVD in his drive apparently never saved the original Windows 7 and was completely blank.  But, OK Windows 10 was coming up.  So I let it run a little while and tested to see if it would connect to the internet, etc.  And it did, but after about 10 minutes it rebooted.  I tried it maybe 5 times and always after a little while it would reboot.  So I went and found an ISO of the OEM Windows 7 for his model, installed that, and tested it for a few days, added Microsoft Security Essentials, Avast, Piriform ccCleaner, and Malwarebytes.  So after the whole experience he's decided not to even try to upgrade to Windows 10.  Meanwhile, my Wife upgraded her PC from Windows 7 to 10 and it has been running just fine ever since the Windows 10 rollout.  Go figure!  

Anyhow, good thing you can store your important documents on DropBox!  If you ever need to do a system restore, they'll all go away from your hard drive permanently.