Windows 10 Support Just Ended. Here's What to Do This Week.

As of today, October 14, 2025, Windows 10 no longer receives security updates, bug fixes or technical support from Microsoft. Your machines will keep working — and every vulnerability discovered from now on will stay open on them forever unless you upgrade, replace or enroll them in Extended Security Updates. Here’s the week-one plan.

What “end of support” actually means for Windows 10

Windows 10 doesn’t stop booting today; it stops being defended. Each month, Microsoft patches new vulnerabilities in Windows 11 — and attackers study those patches to find the same holes in Windows 10, where they will now never be fixed. The risk compounds monthly.

The second-order effects matter too. Software vendors will drop Windows 10 support over the coming year, compliance frameworks treat unsupported operating systems as automatic findings, and cyber insurers ask about them directly. If you handle regulated data — health, financial, legal — an unsupported operating system can put you out of compliance all by itself, regardless of whether anything bad has happened yet. And this isn’t a niche problem: roughly four in ten Windows PCs worldwide were still running Windows 10 this month.

This week: a four-step Windows 10 triage

1. Inventory every Windows device — including the forgotten ones: the PC that runs the label printer, the front-desk kiosk, the machine in the warehouse.
2. Check Windows 11 eligibility. TPM 2.0 and a supported CPU, roughly 2018 or newer. PC Health Check or your management tools can sort the whole fleet in an hour.
3. Sort machines into three lists: upgrade now, replace, or bridge with ESU.
4. Prioritize by exposure. Internet-facing machines and anything touching financial or client data go first. If a machine is both exposed and ineligible for Windows 11, it shouldn’t finish the month in service.

Your three real options: upgrade, replace, or ESU

Upgrade eligible PCs to Windows 11. It’s free, and on business-class hardware from the last five or six years it’s usually uneventful. Roll it out in waves so one bad driver doesn’t take down a whole department.

Replace what can’t upgrade. Machines that fail the hardware check are typically six or more years old — already at the end of a sensible refresh cycle. Spread purchases across this quarter and next rather than panic-buying in one week.

Buy time with ESU — deliberately. Businesses can purchase Extended Security Updates for about $61 per device for the first year, with the price doubling each year for up to three years. It’s a bridge for machines you genuinely can’t move yet, not a plan. Consumers get a cheaper one-year option, and Microsoft 365 Apps will keep receiving security updates on Windows 10 into 2028 — but the operating system underneath is what attackers target.

Handle the machines that can’t move

Almost every business has one machine that truly can’t leave Windows 10 — it runs the CNC controller, the phone system, the lab instrument. Isolate it: its own network segment, no email, no browsing, no internet access it doesn’t strictly need. Then document the exception, so your insurer hears about it from you and not from an auditor after a claim.

Replacements are also the right moment for hygiene you’ll never otherwise schedule: wipe and dispose of old drives properly, move local files into managed cloud storage instead of hand-copying them to the new desktop, and enroll every new machine in encryption, endpoint protection and patching from day one. A refresh done this way raises your security baseline; done hastily, it just moves old problems onto new hardware.

Key takeaways

• Windows 10 machines still run — they’re just no longer defended.
• Inventory the fleet and check Windows 11 eligibility this week.
• Upgrade free where hardware allows; replace where it doesn’t.
• Use ESU as a priced, temporary bridge — the cost doubles every year.
• Isolate and document any machine that genuinely can’t move.

If you’ve got more Windows 10 machines than time this week, book a call — we’ll triage the fleet with you and map the fastest safe path off it.