Tales of Windows Server 2003 and Other Software Used Past Its Prime

by Darryl K. Taft

“Believe it or not, my dentist’s office had one of its computers running Windows for Workgroups. Now, that was scary. When I saw it, I started to look around the office for an abacus.” Windows for Workgroups 3.11 shipped in 1993 and has been unsupported since Dec. 31, 2001.

“I wish I could say I’m joking when I say that I just took this screenshot. Unfortunately, I’m not.” Windows NT Server 4.0 was released in 1996. Mainstream support for it ended Dec. 31, 2002, and extended support ended Dec. 31, 2004.

“I support an office that until this year used a database that required Access 97. When I first encountered this situation—nearly 15 years ago—no one had an Office 97 or Access 97 disk. There was no way to rebuild a client. I scrounged through my personal junk and found an Office 97 disk and have kept it in mint condition ever since. I’ve had to use it a few times over the years as they got new computers and I had to migrate their database. Now that they’ve finally moved on to a hosted solution, I guess I can retire the disk.” Access 97 was released in 1997.

“We have a server still in use in our environment that is actively running Windows Server 2000 and has a legacy version of Cisco Call Manager running on it. It’s the oldest thing in our data center and it scares the [expletive deleted] out of me every day, but despite its age, it just keeps chugging along.” Windows Server 2000 shipped in 2000. Mainstream support ended on June 30, 2005. Extended support ended on July 13, 2010.

“I’ve still got two [expletive deleted] XP machines in operation here. Ugh! I even have replacements ready to go, but I’m waiting on programmers. And just four years ago, I ran into a Windows 98 computer running 24/7 … with mission-critical connectivity to clients provided by modem. Yikes!” Windows 98 shipped in 1998. Mainstream support ended June 30, 2002. Extended support ended July 11, 2006. Windows XP shipped in 2001. Mainstream support ended April 14, 2009. Extended support ended April 8, 2014.

“I checked on some of my old consultant work and found out that one agriculture establishment still has their LANtastic network running. That takes me back!” The current (2006) version is LANtastic 8.01. It can connect PCs running DOS 5.0 (or later) with Windows 3.x or higher (including Windows XP).

“Last year, we moved to a 64-bit platform for desktops … and found one group using Cardfile.exe from Windows 3.1. Thank goodness it wouldn’t work on the new OS! They weren’t happy, but they finally moved to a currently supported solution.” Cardfile is a personal information manager, based on index cards, that was distributed with Microsoft Windows starting from the original version 1.01 until Windows NT 4.0 Server. The latest version of Windows 3.1, Windows 3.11, shipped in 1993. It has been unsupported as of Dec. 31, 2001.