Still on Windows 10? What end of support means for your business now

Windows 10 reached end of support on 14 October 2025. The PCs didn’t switch off, and for plenty of offices nothing looked different the next morning. That’s exactly what makes it easy to put off — and why so many business machines are still running it.

Here’s what changed, what your options are, and how we’d approach it for a small team.

What actually stopped on 14 October 2025#

Microsoft no longer provides three things for Windows 10: technical support, feature updates, and quality updates — which includes the security and reliability fixes that used to arrive every month.

The last one is the one that matters. New weaknesses in Windows are found and published all the time. On a supported system they get patched; on an unsupported one they stay open, and attackers know which machines are likely to still be exposed.

Option one: Extended Security Updates#

Microsoft’s Extended Security Updates (ESU) programme keeps critical and important security fixes coming to enrolled Windows 10 PCs after end of support. For businesses it’s bought through volume licensing, per device, one year at a time.

• Cost: US$61 per device for year one, and the price doubles each following year.
• Length: a maximum of three years after end of support.
• Cumulative: if you join in year two, you pay for year one as well.
• Requirement: devices need to be on Windows 10, version 22H2.

ESU doesn’t include new features, non-security fixes or general technical support. It keeps a PC safer while you replace it — it isn’t a reason not to.

One notable exception on cost: ESU is included at no extra charge for Windows 10 virtual machines running in services such as Windows 365 and Azure Virtual Desktop.

Option two: upgrade the PCs that can run Windows 11#

Windows 11 has stricter hardware requirements than Windows 10, including a TPM 2.0 security chip and a supported processor. Many machines bought in the last few years meet them; older ones often don’t. Microsoft’s PC Health Check app will tell you for a specific machine.

For the PCs that qualify, an in-place upgrade is usually straightforward. The work is in the preparation: confirming line-of-business apps and printers behave, backing up first, and scheduling it so nobody loses a working day.

Option three: replace, on a plan#

For machines that can’t run Windows 11, replacement is the long-term answer. The mistake is doing it all at once in a panic, or one at a time whenever something breaks. A simple plan works better:

1. 01List every PC, who uses it, and whether it can run Windows 11.
2. 02Upgrade the eligible ones first — it’s the quickest security win.
3. 03Enrol the machines you can’t replace this year in ESU, so they stay patched.
4. 04Replace the rest in batches that suit your cash flow, oldest first.

How we’d approach it for a small team#

We start with an inventory, because most businesses are surprised by what they find — a reception PC nobody thinks about, a laptop in a drawer that still signs in to email. From there it’s a short list: upgrade, cover with ESU, or replace.

If your devices are managed through Microsoft 365 and Intune, the upgrade can be rolled out and tracked centrally rather than machine by machine. It’s the kind of project our IT support team runs start to finish.