Windows 10 end of support technically already happened, on 14 October 2025. The date most Australians actually have circled on a calendar is a different one: 13 October 2026, when free security patches for Windows 10 Home and Pro were originally due to stop for good. That date quietly moved. Microsoft updated its own support pages in mid-2026 to push the free consumer Extended Security Updates cut-off out to 12 October 2027, a year later than most coverage at the time assumed it would land.
If you’re one of the roughly one in five Australians StatCounter’s desktop figures still show running Windows 10, that change is worth understanding properly before you decide what to do next. It doesn’t mean you can forget about it. It does mean the decision looks a bit different to how it looked a year ago.
The ESU deadline that quietly moved to 2027
Windows 10’s general support ended on 14 October 2025: no more feature updates, no more routine quality patches, no more free technical support from Microsoft. What kept a lot of machines safe past that date was the consumer Extended Security Updates programme, a stopgap that ships critical and important security fixes only, nothing else.
There are three ways to enrol, and none of them require a business account. You can sync your PC’s settings to a Microsoft account through Windows Backup at no cost, redeem 1,000 Microsoft Rewards points, or pay a one-off fee of around $30 (Microsoft prices it in US dollars, converted to AUD plus tax at checkout). Whichever path you take, one enrolment covers up to ten devices tied to the same Microsoft account, and the PC needs to be on Windows 10 version 22H2 with current updates installed first.
- Free: turn on Windows Backup and sync your settings to a Microsoft account
- Free: redeem 1,000 Microsoft Rewards points through the enrolment wizard
- Paid: a one-off payment of roughly $30, covering up to ten devices
All three get you the same protection, running through to 12 October 2027 according to Microsoft’s own consumer ESU page. We’d argue that’s genuinely useful, if a little strange that Microsoft never made much noise about it. There was no press event, just an updated support page and a line in a blog post. Fair enough, we suppose. It’s not exactly a good-news story for a company that wants everyone on Windows 11.
Check whether your PC can run Windows 11
Before you plan around ESU at all, it’s worth finding out whether you even need it. A lot of Windows 10 machines can run Windows 11 for free and just haven’t been upgraded yet, usually because nobody’s gotten around to it.
Microsoft’s official minimum requirements, published on its own Windows 11 specifications page, are a 1GHz-or-faster 64-bit processor with at least two cores from an approved list, 4GB of RAM, 64GB of storage, UEFI firmware with Secure Boot capability, a Trusted Platform Module (TPM) version 2.0, and a DirectX 12-capable graphics driver. In practice we’d budget for 8GB of RAM rather than the bare minimum; four gigabytes is tight for anything beyond browsing.
TPM 2.0, a hardware security standard, is the one that trips people up. It’s been mandatory on new PCs since around 2016, so most machines from the last eight or nine years technically have the chip. The catch is that it’s sometimes switched off in the motherboard firmware by default, which the free PC Health Check app, downloadable from Microsoft, won’t always distinguish from not having one at all. If the app fails your PC on TPM alone, it’s worth a look in the BIOS or UEFI settings for an option usually labelled “PTT” (Intel) or “fTPM” (AMD) before writing the machine off. We’ve walked more than one reader through exactly that setting over the years, and it’s a five-minute fix more often than not.
Our full Windows 11 compatibility guide goes through the check step by step, including what to do if the PC Health Check app gives you a vague “this PC doesn’t currently meet” answer with no explanation attached, which happens more than it should.
What actually happens if you do nothing
Nothing dramatic, at first. A Windows 10 PC that isn’t enrolled in ESU keeps working exactly as it did the day before. It boots, it opens your browser, it prints. What stops is the quiet stream of patches for vulnerabilities that Microsoft’s security team finds and fixes on newer, supported versions but no longer backports to Windows 10.
That gap widens every month. Security researchers and attackers both study patches for supported systems to work out what was broken, then check whether the same flaw exists in older, unpatched versions, a technique sometimes called patch diffing. It’s a large part of why the Australian Cyber Security Centre’s guidance on legacy Windows systems treats patching as non-negotiable. It’s literally one of the ACSC’s Essential Eight mitigation strategies, the baseline set of controls the agency recommends against the bulk of everyday cyber threats, not just for big organisations but for anyone plugged into the internet.
Browsers add another layer. Chrome, Edge and Firefox have all continued supporting Windows 10 for a period after Microsoft’s own cut-off, but that grace period isn’t indefinite either, and a browser is only as safe as the operating system underneath it. None of this means your PC turns into a brick on 13 October. It means the odds shift, slowly, in the wrong direction, which is a different kind of risk to explain than a hard deadline and easier for people to shrug off. Have a read of our rundown of the current wave of scams and cyber threats targeting home users if you want the fuller picture of what unpatched machines get used for.
Upgrading a PC that’s eligible
If your machine passes the compatibility check, the upgrade itself carries no separate purchase price for an already-licensed Windows 10 PC. Head to Settings, then Windows Update, then Check for updates; if you’re eligible, the Windows 11 offer should appear there directly.
Back up first, properly, not as an afterthought. An external drive or a cloud service both work; what matters is that your photos and documents exist somewhere other than the one drive about to get a major OS upgrade written over it. The upgrade generally preserves your files and most applications, but “generally” is doing some work in that sentence, and a failed or interrupted install is a miserable way to lose a decade of holiday photos.
- Back up your files to an external drive or cloud storage first
- Install any pending Windows 10 updates so you’re fully on 22H2
- Check Settings, then Windows Update, for the Windows 11 upgrade offer
- Plug in a laptop and leave a few hours free, rather than starting it before a call
Once it’s done, give the machine a week or two before judging it. Driver quirks on older hardware tend to shake out with the first couple of update cycles, and in our experience a laptop that felt sluggish on day one is usually behaving normally within a fortnight.
Three alternatives if your PC can’t run Windows 11
For a PC that genuinely fails the TPM or CPU requirement, and isn’t worth new hardware just to keep it going, there are three realistic paths.
Linux Mint
Linux Mint is free, actively developed, and noticeably lighter on older hardware than Windows 11. The current long-term-support release, Mint 22.3 “Zena”, is built on Ubuntu 24.04.3 and is supported with updates through to April 2029. The Cinnamon desktop is deliberately laid out to feel familiar to a Windows user, and LibreOffice covers most document, spreadsheet and presentation needs. Gaming and some specialist Windows software are the real limitations; everyday browsing, email and office work run fine.
ChromeOS Flex
Google’s free ChromeOS Flex turns an old laptop into something closer to a Chromebook: fast to boot, browser-centred, low-maintenance. It’s still actively supported, though Google periodically “decertifies” very old hardware models as it narrows testing resources toward newer machines, so check the certified list for your specific model before committing. It suits a PC that mainly does email, streaming and web apps, and not much else.
Buying new
Sometimes the honest answer is that a nine or ten-year-old PC has earned its retirement regardless of Windows 11 eligibility. Entry Windows 11 laptops have come down a long way in price; our guide to budget laptops in Australia runs through where the money actually goes at that end of the market and where retailers cut corners you’ll notice.
How long you really have, and what we would do
Here’s our mildly contrarian take: the extension to October 2027 is good news, but treating it as a free pass is a mistake, and we’d push back on anyone reading it that way. ESU only ever covers critical and important security fixes, not feature updates, not driver support, not the general polish that keeps an ageing machine usable. A PC that’s borderline today will be a year older by the new deadline, with a battery and an SSD that have degraded right along with it, extension or no extension.
Enrolling still takes a deliberate step too, whether that’s a Microsoft account, a rewards redemption or a payment, and procrastinators tend to leave deliberate steps until the last plausible moment, which rather defeats the purpose of having extra runway. Our advice is the boring kind: run the PC Health Check app this month, not next October. If your machine passes, schedule the upgrade over the coming weeks rather than waiting for a deadline that keeps moving. If it fails, start trialling Linux Mint or pricing up a replacement now, while there’s no pressure attached, rather than in a scramble a year from now when the 2027 date turns out to be just as real as the 2026 one was.
