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ZDNET’s key takeaways
- Windows 10 PCs have two free options for extended security updates.
- To qualify for free personal updates, enroll with a Microsoft account.
- The one-year extension for consumers ends in October 2026.
The Windows 10 end-of-support date is nearly here. Over the summer, Microsoft seems to have belatedly realized that owners of tens of millions of consumer PCs running Windows 10 aren’t ready to replace their old computers, and those customers are also not about to fork over $30 for a one-year Extended Security Updates (ESU) subscription.
Also: How to upgrade your ‘incompatible’ Windows 10 PC to Windows 11 – for free
So, at the end of June, just days before the end of its fiscal year, the company waved the white flag and announced new “free enrollment options” for the ESU program, along with a description of the steps customers will need to follow to sign up. Anyone willing to try out Microsoft’s cloud-based Windows Backup or spend a few minutes per day with the Bing search engine over the course of a week can avoid the $30 tariff and get that subscription for free using the enrollment wizard shown here.
Microsoft is offering a year’s worth of free security updates to owners of Windows 10 PCs.
Screenshot by Ed Bott/ZDNET
The news was buried in yet another long-winded post on the Windows Blog, which praises Windows 11 and encourages customers to upgrade their old PCs, buy new ones, or migrate to cloud-based alternatives like Windows 365 — anything but keep running Windows 10.
Also: Can’t upgrade your Windows 10 PC? You have 5 options – and just weeks to act
The announcement that free ESU subscriptions will be available applies to tens of millions of consumer PCs that are ineligible for the free Windows 11 upgrade because they don’t meet compatibility requirements. Enterprise customers are, alas, not eligible for those free options and will be required to pay a significantly higher price (starting at $61 per device per year, and then doubling each year after that) for up to three years of a commercial ESU subscription. Those business options are available through the Microsoft Volume Licensing Program or through Microsoft’s Cloud Service Provider partners.
ESU coverage for personal devices runs from Oct. 15, 2025, through Oct. 13, 2026. The ESU subscription is tied to a Microsoft account. After signing up, the account owner can apply that update eligibility to as many as 10 PCs when signed in using that account.
Who’s eligible?
The option to sign up for an ESU subscription from a personal Windows 10 PC is now broadly available to any PC running Windows 10, version 22H2, Home, Professional, Pro Education, and Workstation editions, with the latest update installed (August 2025 or later). Enterprise and Education editions are not eligible. The option will also be unavailable on any PC that is joined to an Active Directory domain, Entra ID-joined, or registered with Mobile Device Management software such as Windows Intune.
(Earlier this year, Microsoft published a support document containing full instructions; it has since removed that document and incorporated its contents into a page aimed at convincing customers to buy a new PC. The original document is available in this archived page.)
Also: Microsoft said these 400 readers couldn’t upgrade to Windows 11. They did it anyway
You must be signed in with an administrator account. Because the ESU subscription is tied to a Microsoft account, you will also need to sign in to a Microsoft account as part of the enrollment process.
In addition, Microsoft says, “The ESU program for personal use devices is available in select markets and it is not being expanded to additional regions at this time.” I wasn’t able to find a list of countries and regions that are eligible, but if you’re outside the U.S. or other developed markets, you might be out of luck.
How to sign up
I was able to test the enrollment process on a PC running the Release Preview edition of Windows 10 Pro. The sign-up link is available in Settings > Windows Update, as shown next:
On a personal device running the latest Windows 10 version, you’ll find this link to sign up for Extended Security Updates.
Screenshot by Ed Bott/ZDNET
Clicking “Enroll now” opens the enrollment wizard. Because I was signed in with a Microsoft account and had previously used the Windows Backup program to save my settings to Microsoft’s cloud, I was waved right through with the following message:
If you’re signed in with a Microsoft account and you’ve already used the Windows Backup program, you’ll be able to enroll for free, immediately.
Screenshot by Ed Bott/ZDNET
If you’re signed in with a local account, or if you haven’t previously run Windows Backup, you’ll need to jump through a few extra hoops. You’ll see this page in the enrollment wizard instead.
The free options require a commitment using a Microsoft account.
Microsoft
The easiest of the free options is to use Windows Backup to sync your settings to the cloud. If you’d rather not do that, you can redeem 1,000 Microsoft Rewards points or pay $30 (outside the US, local pricing will vary).
As I’ve previously noted, this option is available only for “personal use,” a move that’s obviously designed to discourage business customers from trying to get security updates at a discount. In small businesses that aren’t part of a managed Microsoft environment, it would be impossible to enforce that restriction, so Microsoft has wisely decided to block personal ESU subscriptions only on commercial devices that are part of a managed enterprise network.
What if you’re not seeing the ESU offer?
Check that you meet all the requirements, as noted above. If so, the best advice is to be patient. Microsoft says it’s rolling out these changes gradually, so it might take a bit longer to get to you. There’s no advantage to signing up before Oct. 15, and even waiting until the end of October will still allow you to receive the normal security updates on Patch Tuesday in November.
A little determined searching will turn up instructions for making registry edits and running PowerShell commands that can force the enrollment offer to appear. In my testing, those shortcuts haven’t been reliably successful and have mostly been a source of frustration. I’ll update this post with any additional details once the end-of-support date arrives.
What’s the catch with the free options?
Using Windows Backup to “sync your settings to the cloud” sounds like a simple option, but that option might not work for you. As it currently exists, the Windows Backup option also copies personal data to the OneDrive cloud storage service. If you have a substantial amount of data and haven’t paid for a Microsoft 365 Home or Personal subscription or a standalone storage upgrade, you’ll burn through the 5GB of default storage and possibly wind up with a big mess.
Also: Windows 11 upgrade failed? These are my 4 most powerful troubleshooting secrets
Redeeming 1,000 Microsoft Rewards points is a simpler option. If you’ve already created a personal profile using your Microsoft account in Edge, you might have already amassed enough points to cover that cost (those points would be worth a little under $1 if redeemed for an Amazon gift card). If your Microsoft Rewards count is starting from zero, you can quickly cover the bill by downloading the Bing app for mobile and using it for two days (500 points), then doing a series of search-based quizzes, polls, and other silly tasks for a few days to accumulate 100-200 points per day on the Microsoft Rewards site.
And if none of those options work for you … well, that will be $30, please.
Also: Consumer Reports calls Microsoft ‘hypocritical’ for stranding millions of Windows 10 PCs
These announcements represent a pretty big climb-down for Microsoft and a tacit acknowledgment that the population of Windows 10 PCs still in use in October is likely to be much larger than expected. The new ESU options won’t change the end-of-support date for Windows 10, but they do offer a one-year reprieve for price-sensitive consumers and a chance for Microsoft to soften the inevitable PR hit it will take at the end of 2025.
Editor’s note: This article was originally published in June 2025 and has been updated several times to incorporate new developments. The most recent update was Sep. 19, 2025.
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