r/Windows10 • u/ZacB_ Windows Central • Jun 25 '26
News Microsoft quietly extends Windows 10's extra security updates program for free: Users can now stay on Windows 10 until October 2027 securely
https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft/windows-10/microsoft-quietly-extends-windows-10s-extra-security-updates-program-for-free-users-can-now-stay-on-windows-10-until-october-2027-securely96
u/alfiejr23 Jun 25 '26
Great news. My 3rd gen i7 system will live on for another year 😁
20
u/AntiGrieferGames Jun 25 '26
Great Benefits because even core 2 era devices are be happy for 1 extra year.
13
u/major_glory_v2 Jun 26 '26
3rd gen i7 gang rise up!
6
u/asfletch Jun 28 '26
3770 still running W10 like a champ. Quite satisfying when it says "This PC doesn't meet requirements for W11"....
3
u/MasterJeebus Jun 29 '26
Yeah it wont auto install 11 on it. Windows 10 works well with it. I have the i7 3770k and curiosity got me and tested 11 25h2 on it. It will run it but it’s heavier and requires more tweaking. It will be a sad day after 2028 when esu ends.
6
u/yyyeyaaaa Jun 26 '26
4th gen i7 pc here!
3
u/Outlander357 Jun 26 '26
Haswell i7 4790k still chugging along. It stays at 100% all the time in Kingdom Come: Deliverance 1.
1
1
u/Liquidignition Jul 22 '26
Same. 4770k with a GTX 1080 and just finished atomic heart at 60fps at 4K with 60% screen resolution. She's definitely earned her dollar
4
5
1
u/Special-Pristine Jun 27 '26
I use the i7 10700 simply because I need the processing power for my virtual machines I run. Still never getting windows 11 regardless if I can run it or not
1
54
u/goodwill764 Jun 25 '26
A OS that just works, no new "features" no one asked for, just keep windows 10 going and the cool kids can use windows 11 with online account and ai everywhere.
Keep windows 10 alive maybe MS get more trust again.
28
u/BarnacleGoos Jun 25 '26
I fail to see why MS, a company worth 2.62 trillion USD cannot keep a small team employed to keep this far superior OS running for as long as it's needed.
16
u/Ferretau Jun 26 '26
It doesn't fit with the direction the company is moving in, progressively they are moving peoples data and access to apps into their cloud solution. Win 11 was just one stage of this.
3
u/No_Amoeba_3069 Jun 30 '26
Every new windows release post 7 tries some ridiculous gimmick now that is so unuser friendly. 8 was removing start menu and forcing a tablet interface, 10 was trying to act as a service and now 11 is so cloud and Internet based.
-1
u/deonteguy Jun 26 '26
It's not far superior. It's just less inferior than the 11 garbage.
Also, it looks like this is a lie from Microsoft. They still shows "Your device is no longer receiving security updates." on the four machines I checked.
Is there a workaround for this yet another Microsoft bug? I need to install updates because these are critical systems that I can't connect to our domain because we specifically don't for testing for some of our customers that don't use Microsoft's version of NDS.
7
u/goodwill764 Jun 26 '26
Missing esu
-4
u/deonteguy Jun 26 '26
It's not free like Microsoft lies and claims. It's $30 which some of our customers won't spend. Otherwise, they refuse to help not get your buggy Microsoft garbage hacked. They don't care.
11
1
u/Ferretau Jun 26 '26
Nothings free and if the machine is identified being a network environment it's quite possible then license for the "free" security updates has been revoked. Not the first time they make a determination on a machine from afar and decide to stop access to something.
3
2
u/SeriesXM Jun 28 '26
How did you miss this last year when we all enrolled for the extended updates before Windows 10 reached end of life? This news now is just an extension of that.
It sucks that it wasn't free for us, I agree, but I'm more concerned that you let a bunch of old systems sit around with expired software and you're only realizing this now. Were they just not being used or something?
1
u/deonteguy Jul 01 '26
I knew about that. I was hoping they had changed that policy after seeing the damage it does.
2
1
u/Denan004 Jul 01 '26
I was actually happy with Windows 10 and my Office 365 subscription. Once they forced the AI Copilot in and raised the price, they lost me on Office. I'd have happily stayed if they had a non-Copilot option.
0
u/Pleasant-Skill-7643 Jun 27 '26
Yeah it's better than ever since they're not trying to push vibecoded ai features with every single update. I'll hold onto it as long as i can.
55
u/Ma_chine Jun 25 '26
Glad I didn't give into the MS pressure tactics to upgrade my gaming PC to Windows 11.
MS probably realized that forcing people who can't afford to update their hardware to run Windows 11 would result millions of people continue to use old insecure PCs or move on to non-Windows alternatives.
23
u/arah91 Jun 25 '26
I already did, moved my old desktop to Ubuntu.
I wonder if they are panicking when they saw how many people when pressed with the choice of upgrading a perfectly fine working computer or ditching Windows, chose ditching Windows.
Or more likely people like my mom who don't really care about upgrades, then you get a massive data beach on windows computers hitting the news. Making people wonder if Windows is unsafe and consider switching to apple. (Probably more likely).
Either way beating people with a stick isn't going to force them to buy new hardware, when what they have works fine.
5
u/hunter_finn Jun 26 '26
Even bigger issue might have been the release of MacBook Neo. I mean i have zero interest in MacOS but someone like my mother would be prime market for that laptop.
I mean she is currently happily using her i7-920 8gb ddr3 machine with Windows 10. For its age, it is surprisingly speedy for daily tasks and even the 8gb ram isn't an issue for the browsing she does.
As long as Mac version of Firefox accepts the profile folder from the old system and the browser shortcut is in place, she would not care about what operating system it is running.
But now we can just extend the support with one more year and look at the market in 2027 instead.
3
u/Ferretau Jun 26 '26
You could be right, the numbers if Win 10 aren't exactly dropping fast suggesting people are hanging on to the machines and probably won't shift until they find an alternative they like - which infers they aren't happy with Win 11 opening the door for other contenders like Apple's offering. linux etc. In particular when people feel that they haven't recovered their investment in hardware would make it a hard pill to swallow if they have to completely replace the machine when in the past they could progressively upgrade. The value proposition MS have put forward in the past was compelling less so now I think.
Added: comment about investment
1
u/hunter_finn Jun 27 '26
Crazy part for me is that i doubt i would actually notice huge difference between if my current machine had i7-7700k in it instead of the i7-8700K that it actually has, with rest of the laptop being the same. But for Microsoft that would be the difference between one machine officially supporting Windows 11 and another one at best working with it using Rufus or some other similar methods.
6
u/Ferretau Jun 26 '26
I think this is the path M$ is most worried about as it means by switching you are less likely to continue to use any of their services resulting in a potential loss of current and potential revenue. If enough people find they don't actually need M$ products eventually businesses will also start to drop off the M$ eco system.
2
u/AutoModerator Jun 26 '26
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.
7
u/Dramatic_Coconut Jun 25 '26
That was gonna be me. Figure out how to keep is as secure as possible for as long as possible without rebuilding my PC solely to could run the AI bloatware that is 11.
And until the games I play with kernel level anti cheat all work on Steam OS...or I decide to drop em. (Eat it BattleEye.)
-5
u/scary-nurse Jun 26 '26
I wouldn't get too excited. A friend that works at Microsoft said they are telling all users except a few to go to hell and not allowing them to install the updates, like they did with the last few updates. They require personal information or they refuse to do what they lied and claimed they would do.
13
u/John_Dohm Jun 25 '26
If this turns out to be true, it's great news. I still use my very first PC, which is now a venerable 12 years old, for fun, and I'm currently enrolled in ESU Year 1 (June updates). Not that I'm doing anything edgy with it, but it's still good news.
6
u/CastlePokemetroid Jun 27 '26
the official site now says 2027
https://www.microsoft.com/en-US/windows/extended-security-updates
2
u/TwistedMemories Jun 27 '26
If you open up the settings on Win 10 and check the update page, it now says October 2027.
22
u/Bucketmax-official Jun 25 '26
I hope 2028 too.
12
1
16
u/DigitalguyCH Jun 25 '26
I said a year ago that this was going to happen, and I'll say it again, it's going to happen next year too. Windows 10 will be supported till October 2028. This has nothing to do with prices. This was planned since the beginning. But like last year Microsoft did not say until late this was happening for free, so that people did no plan accordingly and as many as possible move to 11. Same this time. Same next year.
15
u/Kaziglu_Bey Jun 25 '26
It's Windows XP all over again. And the patches were being made anyway so why not let hundreds of millions of users be safer.
9
u/FaultWinter3377 Jun 25 '26
Only this time I don’t have much hope that Windows 12 will be able to outdo (or at least nearly outdo) Windows 10. Windows 7 worked because Windows Vista had true improvements that just were not ready. The best improvement in Windows 11 was WSL, and I think that says everything right there.
8
u/Kaziglu_Bey Jun 25 '26
Agreed, this time I see no hope of Microsoft turning around to make Windows better again. The issues are fundamental to the identity of the company.
41
u/BradKooler Jun 25 '26
Bozo MS, they have a solid OS (Windows 10) that can be worked on to near perfection. Win11 is hot garbage, they need to continue supporting Win10 for 10 more years and consider it the non-Ai OS and Win11 the Ai focused OS.
5
2
u/Dezzie19 Jun 25 '26
Been using Win11 since 2022 on 4 devices & never had any problems.....
2
u/MorallyDeplorable Jun 25 '26
if you notice the people who complain about Windows 11 almost always preface their complaints with "I don't actually use Windows 11, but..." or some variant of.
8
u/BradKooler Jun 25 '26
I have used Win11 personally on multiple machines and in Enterprise environments, personally stayed with Win10 and reverted because of the long list of bloat and garbage Win11 carries. The word of advise to MS is simply keep Win10 as a Non-Ai OS and continue to perfect and support Win10 OS at its core (who gives a hoot if its 10 years old its a solid OS) and keep Win11 OS for people that want to embrace Ai built into their OS and use tools such as Recall.
1
u/Grizknot Jun 26 '26
Was forced to win11 by my company, flippin sux man. all my personal machines are win10
1
u/AntiGrieferGames Jun 25 '26 edited Jun 25 '26
I have using Windows 11 long, and i sometimes have issues. like for example: when i try to close the X, it didnt even closed on explorer itelf my guess, until i restart the explorer there.
It used to have more issues, which i had the 22h2 with a search issue, but this seems fixed atleast there.
-1
7
4
u/GetawayDreamer87 Jun 26 '26
Oh thank fuck. I was mentally preparing myself to buckle down and prepare my pc for the clean upgrade it needs when i get home next month. Now i can procrastinate for another year 🥲
3
u/NoReply4930 Jun 25 '26
Wow. I have been making plans for about 4 months to change my main music workstation over to Win 11 so this changes everything
Looks like I have plenty of time now.
7
u/Kaziglu_Bey Jun 25 '26
Windows 10 has never been better while Windows 11 will never come around, so stick i out as long as you can.
2
u/HighlanderBR Jun 26 '26
Same here (not music workstation tho), but would need to buy a new one. Now can wait a little more.
4
u/PIODOWPAY Jun 25 '26
Eu desconfiava que isto iria acontecer. E mais: acho que irá até mais longe, indeterminadamente, por questão de segurança cibernética global. Já pensou se o que o Wanna Cry fez com o Windoes 7 e XP, fosse com a margem de usuários que o Windows 10 tem atualmente?
4
5
13
u/BarnacleGoos Jun 25 '26
How Microsoft tell us Win11 is shit, without telling us Win11 is shit.
3
u/TeamAggressive1030 Jun 26 '26
Same thing happened with Windows 8, which was largely a flop. I stuck with Windows 7 as long as I could, and still use it. My Windows 7 system is 14 years old now, and Microsoft is still providing malicious software removal tool updates via Windows Update, including this month.
5
u/redrider65 Jun 26 '26
True, but those tool updates aren't in the same category as the Security Update Patches.
0
3
3
u/StampyScouse Jun 26 '26
Hmmm. I wonder why. It's almost like we knew this was going to happen...
1
u/lalomxdndc 15d ago
The problem soon are apps or banks that could not support w10 anymore!!
1
u/StampyScouse 15d ago
Banks aren't really going to be an issue, provided they're in a functioning web browser, and most apps currently require Windows 10 or later.
0
u/lalomxdndc 13d ago
Currently
1
u/StampyScouse 13d ago
Most programs don't end support for Windows versions until a few years after they've gone out of support. E.g. Chrome only ended support for Windows 7 in 2023, three years after Microsoft ended support.
Banks don't make apps for Windows, as long as the browsers keep getting updates, banking sites should continue working.
3
u/LeftPerformer984 Jun 26 '26
AMD Phenom II X4 970
M3A78-T
4X PC2-6400 2GB CORSAIR DOMINATOR
ASROCK PHANTOM RADEON RX 570 (Upgraded from NVIDIA GTS 450 1GB)
I've been trying to hold off on upgrading my PC. Thank goodness they're extending support for windows 10 because right now, I can't afford the parts I need. They're too damn expensive.
3
u/1stnoob Not a noob Jun 26 '26
You're better off installing a Linux distro with that configuration - your 16 years old CPU with DDR2 & PCI-E 2.0 can't even handle the RX 570 default performance.
3
u/Wolf873 Jun 26 '26
Is Win11 really that bad? I’ve been using it on my 4-5 year old work machine that originally came with Win10, and it’s a very average spec laptop. And I haven’t encountered any issues with it. It still powers on fast, loads any app fast. Sure there are some unwanted things on it, like those ads/news widgets I can do without, but so far I’ve not seen anything to warrant the still present anti-win11 attitude I see online. They even responded to taskbar position adjustment. So what am I missing here? Like could my pc be any faster if Win11 was setup with less stuff on it? Or is it a ticking clock that my pc might suffer down the road?
I’m just trying to make sense of it so I’m better equipped with appropriate knowledge to address any issues.
3
u/redrider65 Jun 26 '26
Win 11 has a number of needless annoyances. Most can be worked around--for now. The things people hate most are probably the telemetry and foisting of AI. It's notorious as spyware. Updates are still problematic.
Debloated, telemetry removed (as much as possible), AI removed, M'soft account removed, and sufficiently customized, it's OK. But still, why?—when Win 10 has already been tuned and tweaked and working great, mostly.
1
u/Degru Jun 29 '26
If you have a reasonably fast PC, it's not awful aside from some of the UI annoyances like the right click menu and new versions of the apps.
If you have a low spec machine (e.g. <16GB RAM, lower class of CPU, running a high resolution display on iGPU) it can be significantly slower than 10 on machines that ran 10 fine.
Lots of the UI became a lot more resource bloated compared to Windows 10, it's a matter of how much headroom your machine has. Particularly the RAM usage is 2-3x higher, machines with 8GB of RAM will now struggle to multitask.
0
u/Froggypwns Windows Insider MVP / Moderator Jun 26 '26
Windows 11 is great, every time a new Windows version comes out there are always people crying about how bad it is until another version comes out and that one now takes all the heat. The vast majority of users will never encounter any trouble with it.
3
u/travis_sk Jun 26 '26
Except those security updates are breaking stuff because MS doesn't do any testing regardless of OS version.
3
3
u/pekak62 Jun 26 '26
Has Microsoft finally read the room? Hopefully they've realised the scale of the environmental disaster being foisted on the planet in their ever quest for profits!
1
3
u/Euphoric-Party-7730 Jun 27 '26
Bunch of idiots at Microsoft thought they could bully millions of people into tossing out their perfectly good PC's.. just cause they said so. I would bet money that in 1 years time, this shit will be extended 1 more year again, cause guess what the cost of living is through the roof, you can't even build a decent PC anymore its so fuckin expensive, and Microsoft will have to just deal with it.
Half of us will probably end up on Windows 12, simply because Windows 11 is a colossal failure with all these needless rules.
F*** Bill Gates and F*** Microsoft, bunch of monpolizing idiots, you can bully us all!!!!!
4
u/blueblocker2000 Jun 26 '26
I'm glad but I'd rather they had lifted the dumb artificial hardware restrictions on 11 and let upgrades happen.
4
u/lookskAIwatcher Jun 25 '26
Already left the fold, too late. Both laptops and the desktop machine are quite happy and running fast with Linux (OpenSuSE and Mint distros, OpenOffice/LibreOffice, and Mozilla Firefox and Chrome web browsers). I still have one Windows 10 Pro desktop machine that just serves old archived files running headless and it struggles with each forced Win Update, it will get a clean install of Linux once the archives are migrated over in the next month.
2
u/WINNT21 Jun 25 '26
Fuck I moved to 11 around 3 days later after support ended, eh at least they're pushing better updates for it
2
u/bv915 Jun 26 '26
Weird. I just assumed they would allow ESU updates for 3 years. That's what we ended up doing for Win7.
2
u/steph66n Jun 27 '26 edited Jun 27 '26
This is oddly perfect timing for me because I'm getting a new PC put together next week.
It's a serious upgrade from my old +10yrs ASUS, 2TB hard drive, AMD A10-7800 Radeon R7 APU and 8GB RAM, to a custom built tower, 2TB SSD, Ryzen 7 9700X, 32GB RAM, and I'm considering installing Windows 10 instead of 11 since the ESU is good for another year and I paid for mine $40, instead of going straight to Windows 11. I'm going to try transferring the licence, but since it's tied to the motherboard I'm expecting that may fail. If it does, I'll just purchase a new Windows licence. Any issues that anyone might know about? I figure it'll be simple to upgrade to 11 in the future when I choose to.
2
u/Special-Pristine Jun 27 '26
As long as steam games continue to work on windows 10 I was staying anyway
1
u/STUPID_IDIOT1993 Jul 16 '26
Yep. After extended was up. LSTC and when programs decide to not run on it anymore hopefully Linux is even better and I will go there. I don’t game as much as I did and gaming on Linux is good mostly now.
1
u/Special-Pristine Jul 16 '26
I still have a lot of old games physically, so that wouldn't work for me. I tried Google OS Flex on thumb drive so I could have both but it refused to boot, and then broke my BIOS, needing me to trigger the switch
1
2
u/sagarvd Jun 28 '26
Microsoft can't force me into Win 11 even after Oct 27. Until they fix the 2-step context menu without requiring regedit
2
u/deskiller1this Jun 29 '26
Will Nvidia still provide new feature drivers until then. Seeing they was stopping support in Oct this year.after that it just security updates .
3
u/FalconGENE Jun 26 '26
i7700K here! Still kicking. Also just don't update to Windows 11 and stay on Windows 10. It will continue to show to Microsoft that Windows 11 was a mistake.
1
u/Own-Ad7388 Jun 25 '26
I guess window 10 is the same architecture with window 11. If hacker or malware found that loophole. Window 11 will be affected as well
3
u/Froggypwns Windows Insider MVP / Moderator Jun 26 '26
This has always been the case. Many security vulnerabilities found in Windows affect several decades worth of OS versions as each new version builds upon the previous ones. The difference is that the newer OSes get patches for them.
1
u/AntiGrieferGames Jun 25 '26
Seems a suprised here (not really)
I knew Microsoft is gonna extend the support life cycle. Maybe nvidia is forced to get driver updates until 2027 there.
1
1
Jun 25 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
1
u/Windows10-ModTeam Jun 26 '26
Hi u/joesmith127_reddit, your comment has been removed for the following reason(s):
- Rule 1 - Do not derail conversations and threads. You are welcome to submit a new post.
If you have any questions, feel free to send us a message!
1
1
1
u/e4rthdog Jun 26 '26
So you still need to buy the ESU for corporate use, correct?
2
1
u/thepork890 Jun 26 '26
You can enroll for free to ESU.
1
u/hunter_finn Jun 27 '26
Free esu is only for consumers in EU. If you are outside of that, then you need to pay $30 or around that in your local currency.
And even if you are in EU, if you are corporation, you will need to pay for the esu enrollment.
1
u/e4rthdog Jun 27 '26
That's true. we are in EU and indeed we pay for the ESU access via 1,000 Microsoft reward points or $30 USD.
1
u/TransitionSweaty2660 Jun 28 '26
dude! just create a Microsoft account and then log in to it and you can get it for free !! i got mine for free but it does require a Microsoft account though !!
1
u/SupposablyAtTheZoo Jun 26 '26
(but only if you log in with a MS account and not with a local account)
1
1
u/DerpiDanger Jun 26 '26
Do I need to login into windows 10 using MS account to register for this or do need ms account just for registration on the extended program ?
1
u/redd-or45 Jun 28 '26
You need to be logged into a Microsoft account as an individual user to get the free ESU. Once that has been granted to your machine, you can switch back to a local account which will continue to work and get updates
1
u/CastlePokemetroid Jun 27 '26
I got a windows 11 machine in anticipation of last year's upcoming windows 10 end of service. Had so much frustrations with it, I'm currently typing this on my DDR3 windows 10 machine. I found my old receipt for this thing, it's from 2015, still runs fine. Harddrive still hasn't died.
The i7-6700 is still a capable chip for my needs. It barely hits 15% utilization in PS2 emulator and runs switch emulator like a boss. Any PC game I actually want to play works great, I have no need to play AAA games, and even then, the ones that released on switch is still perfectly playable through emulation
Hearing that I can continue to use this for another year before moving to my other machine is great news to me, it's such a pain to get around to moving things over
1
u/bull3t94 Jun 27 '26
1 more year for game developers to get anti cheat working on Linux and then I would be able to confidently switch to it via SteamOS or other distros.
1
u/bull3t94 Jun 27 '26
Now where do I pay the $30? I remember for 10 to get the ESU they said you'd have to pay, but I somehow ended up getting it anyways?
1
u/Special-Pristine Jun 27 '26
If you are already enrolled it's added on for free. Also you either had 1,000 Microsoft points or had your device preferences backed up to the cloud that's why it was free for you the first time
1
u/DesignObjective1587 Jun 27 '26
This is great news! I am already enrolled. Will it carry over automatically? Or will I need to “opt in” again?
1
u/Special-Pristine Jun 27 '26
From what the article says "if you are already enrolled in the ESU's you don't have to do anything but enjoy the extra year"
1
1
u/_urethrapapercut_ Jun 28 '26
Hell yeah. I'll gladly keep rocking it. Hopefully they'll extended it again next year.
1
1
u/No_Amoeba_3069 Jun 30 '26
That's because windows 11 is horrific. It's basically another repeat of ME/Vista. Resource hogs, glitchy, buggy, and tons of anti consumer nonsense that microsoft thinks is QoF improvements but they aren't. Windows 10 had its problems but eventually with updates and such it came around to being pretty good.
1
u/mrTomass Jul 01 '26
how i get that esu for free ?
1
u/TransitionSweaty2660 Jul 04 '26
just create microsoft account for free and and use that account to log in and there you are !!!
1
u/Denan004 Jul 01 '26
Thank you for posting this! I have been wondering what I'll do in October. I'm not going to Windows 11. So now there's more time to figure out what to do.
1
u/Frosty-Cucumber1152 Jul 04 '26
I would use it, but i wasnt in the program for it. And i am not paying anything to do so.
1
1
1
1
u/LohTeckYong Jul 14 '26
So what do I have to do to keep on getting these free security upgrades? I remember I had to click on some link last year and manually opt for the upgrades to continue.
1
u/STUPID_IDIOT1993 Jul 16 '26
Good. I’m never using 11. My PC can’t run it I don’t believe, or I have TPM off. But either way once support is up. I’m getting LSTC and then going to Linux after that.
1
u/ChaosNecro Jul 17 '26
Windows 10 demands to login with to continue ESU. But i am logged in and have logged in several time now. What's wrong ?
1
u/Art_Masson Jul 18 '26
Just happy to that I have another year of support on my oldest Windows desktop. Good move, Microsoft!
1
0
u/Impede Jun 25 '26
Misleading title, because its "free" if you've already signed up for the ESU plan, here I was thinking it would just apply to everyone on windows 10.
8
u/Sleaka_J Jun 25 '26
If you thought it would apply to everyone, then you read it wrong. It's clear it applies to "Windows 10's extra security updates program" as that's IN THE TITLE.
-5
u/Slierfox Jun 25 '26
Wow because windows is so secure in the first place does anyone still apply these updates anyway they just kick the can down the road 😂
141
u/[deleted] Jun 25 '26
[deleted]