Manufacturers must stop selling Windows 7 PCs by the end of October 2016

Windows PC manufacturers will only be allowed to sell Windows 10 systems from October 31. From that date, the OEM versions of Windows 7 Professional and Windows 8.1 may no longer be on PCs in stores.

From June 30, 2016, there will be an OEM sales freeze for Windows 8 and from October 31 next year, OEMs such as HP and Dell must stop selling desktops, laptops and other systems with Windows 8.1 and Windows 7 Professional. Microsoft has announced this in an updated version of the end-of-sales schedule for Windows. The Home Basic, Home Premium and Ultimate versions of Windows 7 have been banned from OEM sales since 2014.

The stop of sales is independent of the support. Microsoft will continue to support all versions of Windows 7 through January 14, 2020 with security updates while Windows 8.1 will receive support through January 10, 2023. Microsoft is working on transferring as many systems as possible to Windows 10, including by offering the new version as a recommended update. In this way, the company hopes to prevent problems such as those with Windows XP: many PCs still run that OS, which no longer receives security updates.