Windows 10 questions, answered plainly

Only if you’ve enrolled in ESU. Free support ended on 14 October 2025. Enrolled consumer machines get critical and important security updates until 12 October 2027. Machines that haven’t enrolled are getting nothing.

If you’re unsure whether you’re enrolled, check Settings → Update & Security → Windows Update. Enrolling takes about five minutes and is free for most people.

There are four different dates, which is why everyone is confused:

• 14 October 2025 — free support ended (already passed)
• 12 October 2027 — consumer ESU ends
• 10 October 2028 — Microsoft 365 apps stop getting security updates on Windows 10
• October 2028 — Microsoft Edge and WebView2 stop

The 2027 date is new: Microsoft extended it from October 2026 in June 2026 via a quiet documentation edit, with no announcement. That’s why so many articles still show the old date. Full table with sources.

Nobody knows, and anyone who says otherwise is guessing. What we can say factually: Microsoft has already moved this date twice — first creating consumer ESU at all, then extending it by a year in June 2026 without an announcement. There’s no current indication of a third extension.

We re-check the official documentation monthly and will update this site the day anything changes.

Genuinely free for most people. Three routes, all giving identical coverage to October 2027:

• Free — sync your PC settings via Windows Backup. You do not need to back up documents or photos; just settings. This is widely misreported.
• Free — redeem 1,000 Microsoft Rewards points.
• $30 one-time, if neither free route suits you.

The real catch isn’t money — it’s the Microsoft account requirement.

The UK is not in the European Economic Area, so the special EEA terms don’t apply. This trips up a lot of people, and plenty of articles get it wrong.

In the EEA — the EU states plus Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway — ESU is free with nothing more than a Microsoft account sign-in, following pressure from consumer group Euroconsumers. Post-Brexit, the UK sits under standard worldwide terms.

But it can still be free in the UK via settings sync or Rewards points. You just don’t get the no-strings version.

No. A Microsoft account with administrator rights on the device is mandatory — even if you pay the $30. Local accounts cannot enrol.

This is the single biggest complaint about the programme and there is no supported workaround. Your device also needs to re-authenticate periodically to keep receiving updates.

Up to 10 devices, tied to your Microsoft account rather than to a machine. If you have several Windows 10 PCs in the house, one enrolment covers them all — which changes the arithmetic considerably and isn’t well advertised.

No. Resellers list “Windows 10 ESU Year 1” at around $61. Microsoft gives it away free via settings sync or Rewards points, and charges $30 at most.

There is nothing a reseller can sell you that Microsoft doesn’t provide more cheaply and directly. They’re selling confusion about the programme.

It is security-only. You get critical and important security updates and nothing else — no technical support (beyond help with ESU itself), no feature updates, no bug fixes, no performance improvements. Not even moderate or low severity security fixes.

It’s a bridge, not a continuation of support — but for keeping a working PC safe for another year, it does the job.

Usually one of three things — and two of them are often just switched off rather than missing:

• TPM 2.0 — frequently present but disabled in the BIOS. Look for PTT (Intel) or fTPM (AMD). Turning it on can make an “incompatible” PC eligible.
• Secure Boot — usually also a BIOS setting, though switching from Legacy to UEFI boot can be more involved.
• The processor — a hard block. Roughly Intel 8th generation or newer, AMD Zen 2 or newer.

Microsoft’s PC Health Check tells you “no” without saying which check failed, which is why so many people wrongly conclude they need new hardware. WhyNotWin11 is a free open-source tool that shows every check individually.

Yes — tools like Rufus create installation media that strips out the TPM, Secure Boot, RAM and processor checks. It works, and plenty of people run it.

The honest caveats: Microsoft doesn’t support or recommend it, unsupported installations may not receive all future updates, and Microsoft guarantees nothing about stability. It’s a real option with real risks — not a free lunch, and not a disaster either.

Almost certainly. Linux Mint asks for 2GB of RAM and 20GB of disk. A machine that fails the Windows 11 check typically has 4–8GB and an SSD-capable drive — comfortably above that.

This is the key insight: the Windows 11 barrier is a policy rule about security chips, not a verdict on your hardware’s speed. Your PC isn’t too slow; it just lacks a specific chip Microsoft decided to require.

Best way to be certain: run it from a USB stick first. Changes nothing, takes ten minutes.

The genuine blockers, stated plainly: Adobe Creative Cloud (no Linux version of anything), QuickBooks Desktop and Sage, Microsoft Access, macro-heavy Excel (macros need rewriting, not converting), CAD software like SolidWorks, and competitive games with kernel anti-cheat.

If none of those describe you — if the PC is mostly browser, email, documents and photos — you’ll barely notice. The full list.

Only if you want a Mac for its own sake. Switching costs roughly 2–4× a budget Windows PC and 30–60× what ESU costs. Prices also rose in June 2026 because of a memory shortage, so they’re higher than you may remember.

Good reasons: you already use an iPhone or iPad, you do creative work, you want the battery life and quiet. Bad reason: the Windows 10 deadline, which you can neutralise for free. The full picture, including who shouldn’t switch.

Some. Apple silicon Macs run only the ARM version of Windows 11, which then emulates normal Windows apps — two layers of translation. Boot Camp no longer exists, so there’s no dual-booting.

CrossOver ($74 once) runs individual apps without Windows at all — test yours in the free trial first. Parallels ($99.99/yr) gives a full Windows environment and is Microsoft-authorised. VMware Fusion Pro is free for all uses, including commercial.

What never works: anything needing Windows kernel drivers — hardware dongles, till systems, lab instruments, and games with kernel anti-cheat.

Your PC keeps working. Nothing switches off, no files vanish, no nag screen locks you out. Windows 10 will run for years.

The real consequence is that newly discovered security holes never get fixed on your machine. The risk builds gradually rather than arriving on a date. Your browser stays supported until 2028, which helps, since that’s where most real-world risk arrives.

Still — enrolling in ESU is free for most people and takes five minutes. There’s no good reason to skip it.

Probably not, and certainly not because of this deadline. You’re covered free until October 2027.

If the machine feels slow, that’s usually the drive rather than age. Replacing a mechanical hard disk with an SSD typically costs £30–60 and transforms how the computer feels — far better value than a replacement.

Buy a new machine when you want one, or when this one dies. Not on someone else’s schedule.

“Dangerous” overstates it, but the position is real: without ESU your operating system hasn’t had a security patch since October 2025.

In practice, most attacks arrive through the browser, and browsers on Windows 10 stay supported until 2028. Keeping Edge or Firefox current, having a backup, and being careful with email attachments covers most of the practical risk. Enrolling in ESU closes the rest, for free.

Fair question — a lot of Windows 10 content is written to sell you something.

Every factual claim here links to a primary source, mostly Microsoft’s own documentation. We lead with the free option even though it earns us nothing. Every migration guide has a section on who shouldn’t take that path. Where we’re unsure, we say so rather than rounding up to confidence.

The only affiliate links on this site are for SSD and RAM upgrades — things that help you keep the PC you own. You won’t find us pushing replacement computers.