Windows XP will go dark on April 8, 2014 and Microsoft hopes to see the majority of users switching to a newer Windows version by the time the retirement date comes.

And still, it appears that Windows XP is still a tough nut to crack, as the 12-year-old platform is still the second most popular OS version in the world with a 20.53 percent market share.

Data provided by market researcher StatCounter indicate that Windows XP has barely lost users this year, despite all Microsoft's efforts to show that Windows 8 and 8.1 are much better choices for those still on XP.

Back in January, Windows XP had a market share of 25.51 percent and dropped to 22.75 percent in April before eventually declining to 21.28 percent in October when Microsoft rolled out Windows 8.1.

And still, this means that Windows XP has only lost 4.98 percent of its users in approximately 12 months, which is clearly not enough to see the aging OS going dark completely by April 8, 2014.

Microsoft apparently knows this very well and recently said in a statement that it hopes to cut Windows XP's market share to only 13 percent and then work on with more users to move to newer OS versions.