Microsoft recently announced that three legacy services in Windows will be discontinued. The company thus entered a long-term strategic direction towards the development of the operating system. The move comes as little surprise, as Microsoft regularly introduces new features and improvements while also phasing out old features or services that no longer align with their vision.
Microsoft is removing PC Browser, Web Client (WebDAV) and Remote Mailslot features from Windows
As noted in an online document tracking deprecated Windows features, the three deprecated services are Computer Browser, Web Client (WebDAV), and Remote Mailslot.
This update was revealed by @XenoPanther on Twitter. Each of these services serves a specific function, but they are outdated and pose security risks.
The Computer Browser service, along with its associated driver and device location protocol, are considered insecure. First, this service was disabled by default in Windows 10 with the removal of Secure Message Block version 1 (SMB1). This move was a step towards increasing security measures within the operating system.
The WebDAV API, an extension of HTTP, was introduced with Windows Vista but is no longer launched by default in current Windows versions. This suggests a shift away from its use as newer technologies emerge.
Finally, Remote Mailslots, an interprocess communication (IPC) protocol first introduced with MS-DOS, is considered seriously outdated and insecure. A senior Microsoft executive even went so far as to describe this protocol as “disgusting” earlier this year and emphasized that there was an urgent need for its deprecation.
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Although these features have been marked for deprecation, we should point out that they have not been completely removed yet. They will continue to be available on Windows for now, but Microsoft won’t be making new investments in these services or actively updating them.
It is estimated that these legacy services will eventually be phased out in a future version of Windows. However, Microsoft has not provided a specific timeline for this transition at this time.