Windows 10 End of Life is October 14 2025

Microsoft will officially stop supporting Windows 10 in October 2025, when its successor, Windows 11, will become the only game in town (unless Windows 12 happens to creep out next year, that is).  Whatever the case, come October 2025, if you’re running Windows 10, it’ll no longer receive updates. And right now, a whole lot of folks are still using Windows 10, with Windows market share figures showing the OS remains the dominant power, still way ahead of Windows 11. Windows 10 debuted in July way back in 2015, and the operating has had a pretty good run – but the road is rapidly running out for support, and in fact the End of Life (EoL) for the OS is scheduled for next year, a decade after it first came out. So, if you’re one of the majority of the computing public still using Windows 10, what do you need to do ahead of time, and what are your options as the End of Life date comes ever closer? Let’s dive into the details and explore all the avenues potentially open to Windows 10 users.

Windows 10 support ceases on October 14, 2025. While that might seem a long way off at this point, think of it this way: in a year, you’ll be not much more than four months away from your operating system having all updates dropped. (And we all know how quickly a year seems to fly by these days). Having no cumulative updates piped through to your Windows 10 PC is a big problem. Mind you, it doesn’t mean your computer will suddenly stop working – in fact, Windows 10 will continue to chug along just fine. And doubtless there’ll be a number of people that just keep on trucking with Windows 10 in this manner.  The trouble is that with no security updates being provided (well, except in very rare cases when Microsoft may make an exception), any vulnerabilities that become known in Windows 10 will remain open to exploit. And the longer time ticks on, the more of those exploits will be present, leaving multiple holes that could be leveraged by hackers to compromise your PC (and maybe your bank account or who knows what else). So, as you can see, while you can stick with Windows 10 beyond 2025 in theory, it really isn’t recommended, especially not for any length of time. Given that, let’s see what the best courses of action to take are, rather than remaining a sitting duck for hackers on an unprotected operating system. The good news about upgrading to Windows 11 is that it’s free for Window 10 users, but there is a catch of sorts. This lies in the hardware requirements, which Microsoft has made far more stringent than has previously been the case with Windows upgrades.

To make the move to Windows 11, your PC will need to support the hardware requirements we outline – though the sticking points for many will likely lie in two main places.  Firstly, if you have an Intel CPU older than an 8th-gen model (8000 series, such as the 8700K is fine for example), or an AMD processor older than a Ryzen 2000 series, then you won’t be able to upgrade. And secondly, you need TPM 2.0 which is a requirement for the bolstered security Windows 11 provides (better security was one of the main driving forces behind the underpinnings of the OS for Microsoft).  If your PC is eligible for upgrading to Windows 11, at this point, you will likely have been offered that upgrade (probably about 10 times or more). To fire up the Windows 11 upgrade, you simply need to head to Windows Update (type that in the search box on the taskbar) and go from there, following Microsoft’s instructions. (Be sure to back up your files and system first, though – we’ll return to that at the close of this article).

If you’re not sure whether your PC is good for a Windows 11 upgrade, odds are it isn’t if you haven’t been prodded to switch to the newer OS by Microsoft (but you may be able to make your computer eligible yet).  Whatever the case, you can find out for sure what the score is by using the PC Health Check tool. Head to this Microsoft web page and scroll right to the bottom, then click the link to ‘Download PC Health Check app.’ Once it’s been grabbed, find the file ‘WindowsPCHealthCheckSetup’ in your browser’s downloads folder, and double click to run it – then follow the instructions you’re given. When you click ‘Finish’ the Health Check app will automatically run, and you can click the ‘Check Now’ button.  You’ll then be told if there are any stumbling blocks preventing your PC from getting Windows 11. If there are, the issues are most likely to be the ones we outlined above.  If it’s the case that the Health Check app tells you that your CPU is too old, then you’ll have to upgrade that processor in order to get the new OS. Otherwise, you’re out of luck for running Windows 11 (and further bear in mind that a CPU upgrade may well require your motherboard to be switched out, too, if the processor uses a different socket, which will almost certainly be the case).