Windows XP is out of support - how SAP GUI deals with it...

[former_member204677]

Dear folks,

As hopefully everyone knows - Microsoft Windows XP has gone out of support finally.

You may ask: But what about the SAP GUIs running on XP?

SAP GUI for Windows 7.30 will continue to stay compatible with Windows XP, but as of SAP GUI for Windows 7.40 Windows XP will NOT be supported anymore - also due to technical reasons.

Kind regards,
Martin

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hello Samuli,

Everything pertaining the SAP GUI Client was compiled with older versions of Visual Studio.  Your backend instances usually have annual maintenance applied in the form of Kernel and Component updates.  Contingent upon updates etc., you will eventually encounter more and more issues with the SAP GUI Client and the updated mimes and templates that are activated with the kernel plus SAP_BASIS component.

Background:

SAP GUI for Windows is shipped together with some Microsoft Windows system files that are required by SAP GUI for Windows. These system files are called redistributables and they are provided by Microsoft together with the development environment Visual Studio. The main reason for including these files in the SAP GUI for Windows installation was older Windows Operating Systems which didn't necessarily come with the required versions of the system files. Platforms like Windows XP were shipped with compatible versions of all  files.

If a newer version of file to be installed by SAPSetup already exists on the destination then SAPSetup will not install this file in order to make sure newer files are never overwritten with older ones. This shouldn't be a problem since all of the mentioned files should be downwards compatible so the newer version should always be the better one. For reasons of completeness SAPSetup will log the fact that files to be installed have already existed in a newer version. This log entry of SAPSetup is classified as a warning though because it is the intended behaviour.

Reference SAP Note 66971 - Supported SAP GUI platforms

End of support for SAP GUI for Windows 7.20 was reached on 9th of April 2013. Please upgrade to a newer release.

Windows XP SP1 and SP2 are no longer supported by Microsoft (also see http://support.microsoft.com/gp/lifeselectwin). Therefore the minimum prerequisite for running SAP GUI on Windows XP is SP3.  Once a SAP GUI release has reached the end of support SAP no longer offers corrections for this release. Existing patches remain on SAP Service Marketplace for a while, but will eventually be removed.removed.

The successor of SAP GUI for Windows 7.20 is SAP GUI for Windows 7.30. This release is available since June 2012.

SAP GUI for Windows Release 7.30: Windows XP Professional 32-bit/64-bit - restricted support

Reference SAP Note 147519 - Maintenance strategy / deadlines for SAP GUI

Just like older SAP GUI releases SAP GUI for Windows 7.30 is compatible with all releases of SAP products which are supported by SAP (this includes releases in extended maintenance and releases newer or equal to SAP R/3 3.1i in customer specific maintenance).

On July 15th, 2015 the used development environment Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 will transit to Microsoft's "Extended Maintenance" mode. This means that Microsoft will not create any corrections for components which belong to this development environment anymore (unless the issue is security relevant).  Therefore no extension beyond this date is possible.

Successors to SAP GUI for Windows 7.30 is SAP GUI for Windows 7.40. This release is planned for end of Q3/2014 / beginning of Q4/2014 (may be subject to change).

SAP GUI for Windows 7.40 is being developed with Visual Studio 2012 which will be de-supported by Microsoft on 9th of January 2018.

Cheers,

Dan Mead

[Former Member]

Thank you for the information. So can we assume SAP GUI for Windows 7.30 running together with NWBC for Desktop 4.0 (both on Windows XP) will be supported as well? At least as long as both are supported?