Zombie OS: Windows XP still powers 181M PCs two years after support ends

Even though Microsoft retired Windows XP two years ago, an estimated 181 million PCs around the world ran the crippled operating system last month, according to data from a web metrics vendor.

Windows XP exited public support on April 8, 2014, amid some panic on the part of corporations that had not yet purged their environments of the 2001 OS. Unless companies paid for custom support, their PCs running XP received no security updates after that date.

Consumers were completely cut off from patches, with no alternatives other than to switch to a newer operating system or continue running an insecure machine.

But two years after XP's support demise, nearly 11% of all personal computers continue to run the OS, data for March from U.S.-based analytics vendor Net Applications showed. Meanwhile, Windows XP accounted for about 12% of all Windows-powered PCs. (The user share difference between all PCs and those only running Windows was due to the fact that Windows was the OS on 91.5% of all personal computers, not 100%.)

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