Microsoft has backed down on its plan to hustle owners of certain PCs to Windows 10 by crimping support options.

Redmond revealed the plan last January, when it decreed that PCs running 6th-generation Core i5 or Core i7 CPUs and Windows 7 would only get limited security and stability support until mid-2017. By March it backed off a little, extending support for another year and promising critical patches would flow until end of life.

On Thursday US time it gave up and extended full support until the operating systems' planned end of life.

Microsoft's explanation is that while “Enterprise customers are moving to Windows 10 faster than any version of Windows … we recognize that, in some instances, customers have a few systems that require longer deployment timeframes.”