Nein they can't just stop support for XP
Oh yes they can. XP Home is no longer supported. XP Pro is still supported for now, because of its widespread business use, but its retirement has already been announced. From the horses mouth:-
http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/?LN=en-ca&C2=1173&x=12&y=12And an article on it.
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,1000000121,39246991,00.htmsupport for Windows XP Home and Windows XP Media Centre Edition would end on 31 December, 2006.
Windows XP Professional, because it is a business product, will get "extended support" for five additional years following the expiration of mainstream support, which will come two years after Vista's debut
What do you think extended support means?
http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/#Extended Support
(you might need to copy and paste that link sorry)
The Extended Support phase follows Mainstream Support for Business and Developer products.
At the supported service pack level, Extended Support includes:
Paid support
Security update support at no additional cost
Non-security related hotfix support requires a separate Extended Hotfix Support Agreement to be purchased (per-fix fees also apply)
Please note:
Microsoft will not accept requests for warranty support, design changes, or new features during the Extended Support phase
Extended Support is not available for Consumer, Hardware, Multimedia, and Microsoft Dynamics products
Enjoy the Microsoft future!
So what exactly happens after rebooting the PC?
Well it still boots. But the problem with playing video doesn't go away. I've tried quite a bit, short of re-installing (which is tricky to find time to do to my own pc at work) to fix it, but no luck so far.
Basically, Nero chucks up about 50 errors every time you play a video. You have to click OK on them all. Then the video plays, but sometimes it happens in the middle of videos too.
Uninstalling it doesn't help. I think this might be because MS licenced Nero's software for the inbuilt DVD/CD burning in Vista (and XP too, but its less capable in XP) and they might have a problem with each other.
Still working on fixing it though, so don't know really, yet.