Microsoft has a problem on its hands. Windows 10 will crash into end of life in October, with likely hundreds of millions of users yet to upgrade to Windows 11. And while for most of 2024 there was a steady albeit small shift from the older to the newer OS, towards the end of the year Windows 10 recovered some lost ground. February’s stats will be critical, to confirm the shift to Windows 11 is still gaining momentum.
That move to Windows 11 is free if — and it’s a big if — you have both a paid-up version of Windows 10 and a PC that meets the technical and security hurdles for the upgrade. If the PC fails the technical check then so does the free upgrade. For a time it seemed that Microsoft was easing up on those requirements, but not so.
There was also a time when it seemed that the free upgrade was timeboxed, with a. blogpost titled “Free Upgrade to Windows 11 (For a Limited Time Only).” But again that advice was clarified and the hinted deadline was removed. There is an assumption that the free upgrade won’t expire, even as the October end of life passes, but that’s not formally confirmed by the company and so be careful.
There remains a risk that once Windows 10 becomes a retired OS, a free upgrade deadline will be revisited. That blogpost didn’t come from nowhere. But now post that has been deleted, all we know formally is that “the free upgrade offer does not have a specific end date for eligible systems; however, Microsoft reserves the right to eventually end support for the free offer.” I have asked if there’s any change to this.
Even if the free offer doesn’t expire on October 14th, security updates will. And so you should take the offer before that date if your PC is compatible. There are still somewhere between 300 and 400 million users who can upgrade but haven’t yet, and maybe the same again who will need new hardware.
Upgrading a non-compatible PC with one of the workarounds still available will likely remove invalidate any remaining hardware as well as software support. Your options are to pay Microsoft $30 for a 12-month support extension or to buy a new PC — the option the marketeers are pushing hard, especially with new Copilot AI PCs.
