Microsoft announces its plan to discontinue VBScript

Visual Basic Script has been used in Windows for decades, but as the technology develops, older languages become less useful over time.

This is why Microsoft has decided to finally retire Visual Basic Script on Windows.

Visual Basic Script is getting discontinued later this year

It’s no surprise that Microsoft is planning to retire Visual Basic Script, especially after disclosing plans to deprecate NTLM in Windows 11.

As The Hacker News writes, the VBScript will be retired in the second half of the year in favor of JavaScript and PowerShell.

Microsoft Program Manager Naveen Shankar explained the reason for this change:

These languages offer broader capabilities and are better suited for modern web development and automation tasks.

The retirement process will have three phases, and it all starts by making VBScript an on-demand feature in Windows 11 24H2 later this year.

Around 2027, VBScript will still be on demand, but not enabled by default, and it will be completely removed at a later date.

Naveen Shankar provided the following clarification:

This means all the dynamic link libraries (.dll files) of VBScript will be removed. As a result, projects that rely on VBScript will stop functioning. By then, we expect that you’ll have switched to suggested alternatives.

VBScript has been known to be a target of many attacks, so it’s no wonder that Microsoft decided to phase it out.

In other news, Microsoft won’t force Windows 11 feature updates on PCs, which will help with avoiding future issues.