Windows 10 Officially Reaches End of Life!

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Microsoft ended support for Windows 10 on October 14, 2025 — users should upgrade, enroll in ESU, or accept increased security and compatibility risk.

Quick Report

Microsoft ended support for Windows 10 on October 14, 2025 — users should upgrade, enroll in ESU, or accept increased security and compatibility risk.

Microsoft has drawn a line under Windows 10: feature updates, routine quality-of-life improvements and general technical support stopped on October 14, 2025. Devices will continue to boot and run existing software, but the cadence of system hardening and capability updates has ended. Extended Security Updates (ESU) can provide a temporary safety net for eligible machines, but ESU availability, pricing, and enrollment rules vary by region and by whether a user is a consumer or an organization.

In the European Economic Area (EEA) Microsoft is offering a one-year free ESU window for eligible users who sign in with a Microsoft account; outside that region organizations and individuals will need to evaluate paid ESU or other migration strategies. ESU provides security patches only — it does not restore new features or non-security fixes, and it is explicitly temporary.

Security best practices for remaining on an unsupported OS include backing up data, keeping antivirus up to date, and minimizing risky online behaviour. For many home users the simplest options are upgrading to Windows 11 (if hardware permits), replacing aging devices, or migrating critical workloads to supported platforms such as macOS or Linux.

Written using GitHub Copilot GPT-5 mini in agentic mode instructed to follow current codebase style and conventions for writing articles.

Source(s)

  • TPU
  • Microsoft Support