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How to stop the Windows XP End of Service reminders

Last month, Microsoft informed us that Windows XP users will receive a pop-up on the 8th of every month to notify them that Windows XP will reach End of Support on April 8th, 2014. If an organization is aware of Microsoft’s end of updates to Windows XP but can’t upgrade due to financial or technical reasons, do they have to be bothered by these popups regularly? Here’s how you can disable them.

Browse to Scheduled Tasks under Start, Programs, Accessories, System Tools. There, I found two scheduled tasks: Microsoft Windows XP End of Service Notification Logon and Microsoft Windows XP End of Service Notification Monthly. You can right-click on each of the scheduled tasks and delete them or modify the schedule appropriately.

If you investigate the scheduled task, you will find it points to an executable at C:Windowssystem32xp_eos.exe. Launching that executable just displays the pop-up seen in the top picture.

To systematically remove these pop-ups, you can just use a Group Policy Preference to remove the Scheduled Task by name.