The original release of Windows Vista reached the end of its support on Tuesday, meaning that customers now need to be running either Service Pack 1 or Service Pack 2 of Vista to get assistance from Microsoft.
However, in conjunction with this milestone, Microsoft did make a subtle adjustment to its support policy, easing the hard deadline. Under the new policy, Microsoft support staff are allowed to make their "best effort" to provide limited troubleshooting to customers running unsupported service packs, even if they don't have a custom support contract.
"Under the former service pack support policy, when a service pack reached the end of support, customers were no longer eligible to receive troubleshooting help from Microsoft Customer Service and Support, including assisted telephone support, security updates, or non-security hotfixes," Microsoft said in a blog posting.
For more on this story, see Original Vista reaches end of support on CNET News.
