Looking for an old KB support page? This website has them all

Times are changing, and technology is evolving at a rapid pace. In keeping with this idea, OSes come and go, but that doesn’t mean that they should be forgotten.

For example, a lot of users still use Windows XP, let alone Windows 7. The same thing can be said by those that still use older versions of Windows Server.

Of course, not everyone knows everything about them, so more often than naught, we are forced to look for the Microsoft Support page whenever we have questions about a product.

A new KB support page was created

However, it seems that Microsoft is slowly but surely deleting its database of support pages, or at least the ones regarding older products that are no longer supported.

This means that in the near future, the only pages left will be those that are about Windows 10 and Windows Server versions 2012 or newer.

This change is logical since the general tendency is to move away as much as possible from older OSes.

Unfortunately, those articles usually contain information that is still relevant to today’s OS, such as tips, tricks, fixes, and more.

Given this change, PKI Solutions partnered up with Way Back Time Machine in order to create a private archive of all KB support pages that Microsoft has.

It will be called the Microsoft KB Archive and it will be available for the general public, free of cost.

Why create the Microsoft KB Archive?

As mentioned before, most past articles still contain useful information that is relevant today.

These include technology description, tip, and tricks, workarounds to issues and limitations, design decisions, etc. Most importantly, most articles were aimed at Windows Server 2003 or Windows XP products.

All new articles that are written are made from scratch without any regard to what was written in the past. Thus, older articles would be doomed to disappear without anyone even looking to see whether they were still any good or not.

The entire procedure started back in November 2019 when research was started to find possible APIs to get the list of current articles. This entire effort eventually paid off, since their database currently holds over 105.000 articles for users to choose from, and it is still growing.

The Microsoft KB Archive will not compete with Microsoft

The archive will not be a direct competition to Microsoft. To that end, the archive’s developers state that only articles that have been deleted will be added to the database. Thus, you will never find the same articles on both Microsoft’s Support page and on the Microsoft KB Archive.

The developers stated that:

We will NOT be displaying any information that is currently available on the Microsoft website.
We have no desire to compete with information sharing or traffic to the Microsoft site.

As far as layout goes, the Microsoft KB Archive will be similar to the Way Back Machine Internet archive. You will have a search bar from which you can easily search for whatever articles you need. 

The future of Microsoft KB Archive

The developers have big plans for this new archive, stating that they plan on updating it every month. More so, they are even considering to implement a newsletter service for anyone that will regularly be using their archive.

All in all, the entire idea of a private archive of all past support articles is really great. This is especially the case since, from a realistic standpoint, not everyone is actually updating to the latest OS all the time.

What’s your take on this incredibly handy tool? Share your thoughts in the comments section below and we’ll continue to keep you updated on the matter.