Microsoft employees will no longer provide support on the Microsoft Answers forums that cover Windows 7, Windows 8.1, Internet Explorer 10, Office 2010, Security Essentials and several Surface devices, the Redmond software giant announced today.
The forums are a place where users of Microsoft products can post their questions and post answers to help others. Questions are not only answered by other users, also Microsoft support employees frequent the forums to provide technical support there. However, starting next month, Microsoft employees will no longer provide support in the forums that cover Windows 7, Windows 8.1 (RT), Security Essentials, Internet Explorer 10, Office 2010, Office 2013 and several Microsoft devices such as the Surface Pro, Surface Pro 2, Surface RT, Surface 2.
These forums will continue to exist and Microsoft will continue to moderate them, but employees will no longer answer questions, or mark questions as answered, Microsoft writes on its website.
A few other forums will see different changes. The Microsoft Band forum will be locked and users are asked to participate in the Microsoft Band 2 forum. Owners of a mobile device from Microsoft can continue to receive support in the 'other Windows mobile devices' topic, and the Zune forum will become read-only.
While the company no longer provides support in the Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 support forums, these operating systems are still in the extended support stage. That means they will continue to receive security updates.
Windows 7 will be in extend support till the 14th of January 2020 and Windows 8.1 will continue to receive security updates till the 10th of January 2023.
