While Photos and Drive users are still getting over the pitfalls that Backup and Sync brought along, Google has now disclosed that the official Drive and Photos client application no longer supports Windows XP.
The company took to the official Drive forum to break the news, while addressing Windows XP users complaining that Backup and Sync crashes right on start, and displays the following fatal error/ message:
Those affected also added that the error message further led to another notification stating “Fatal error! Failed to execute script main“.
Here’s exactly what a Google employee Alex said:
He also suggested that those suffering from this issue can revert back to the client’s older version (3.36.6884.5911). But needless to say that in case you do that, you won’t be able to use any new features that version 3.37 brought along, including multiple account support.
It’s worth mentioning that users still have an option to use the old Google Drive and Google Photos clients. But sadly, Google has already deprecated the old Drive client, and it’s likely that old Google Photos client will also meet the same fate sooner or later. So, updating your Windows version to 7 and beyond is the only long term solution now.
This development shouldn’t come as a surprise, as Microsoft itself ended the support for XP back in 2014. But the change likely affects millions, as Windows XP is still is the fourth most popular desktop OS in the world.