The Windows 10 clampdown continues
If you’re one of the 850 million Microsoft users stubbornly sticking to Windows 10, despite all the efforts to push you (and a technically compliant PC) over to Windows 11, then you can now pay $30 to delay Windows 10 end of support back a year to October 2026. But Microsoft is not backing down beyond that, and there’s more bad news if you want to keep Windows 10 as long as possible.
As Neowin has just discovered, “Microsoft doesn’t like you downloading Windows 10 even from official sources anymore,” with “cautionary banners about the upcoming end of life (EOL) of Windows 10 plastered all over the place on various Microsoft pages on its official site.”
And if you need to install Windows, then the support article with how-to guides and links “has been changed with separate subsections for Windows 11 and Windows 10 and gone are links to download Windows 7 and Windows 8.1. Under the Windows 10 section, a new banner cautioning users about its EOS is up, and it also encourages users to move on to Windows 11.”
Latest Windows 10 warning on install page
You can still download Windows 10, but the highlight is the recommendation not to. “Support for Windows 10 will end in October 2025,” it says. “After October 14, 2025, Microsoft will no longer provide free software updates from Windows Update, technical assistance, or security fixes for Windows 10. Your PC will still work, but we recommend moving to Windows 11.”
This is just the latest move by Microsoft to accelerate the push to Windows 11, which has been famously lagging previous OS upgrades. The good news is that the rate of Windows 11 is noticeably increasing—finally, with some 50 million users switching over the last two months. But that still leaves 850 million Windows 10 yet to make a move, of which around 400 million likely have non-compliant hardware. There are also a further 50 million Windows users on even older versions of the OS, which are already off-support and will find it difficult even moving to Windows 10 now.
As I’ve commented before, the 12-month hiatus giving users willing to part with $30 some breathing space just delayed the inevitable. Windows 10 is coming to an end, and users nee to upgrade and sure that have the compliant TPM 2.o enabled hardware to do so. This isn’t the time to come off support, given the continual flow of Windows vulnerabilities. The good news is that 2025 could be the ideal year to buy a new PC—you can read all about why that might be here.