Microsoft has just issued a mandatory security update for all Windows 10 users, and this one comes with a new warning. Microsoft has now confirmed the next one of these updates — in October — will be the last you’ll ever receive. Unless you act now.
Microsoft warns “the October monthly security update will be the last update available,” which means your Windows 10 PC “will no longer receive monthly security and preview updates containing protections from the latest security threats.”
As for the September update, per Windows Latest, you’ll find this “under ‘2025-09 Cumulative Update for Windows 10 Version 22H2’ in the Settings app.”
This brings us to the fabled Windows 10 extended security update option, which secures a 12-month reprieve from this end-of-life, at least as far as security updates go. You can grab this for free if you tick some account and OneDrive boxes, or you can pay $30 to update up to 10 PCs on the same account, or you can forfeit some reward points.
The problem is that the ESU enrollment option is rolling our slowly and while we assumed this September update would being it to all users, that does not appear to be the case. While Microsoft says everyone will get it before the October 14 deadline, time is fast running out and you can’t leave this too late.
This means you need to regularly check the Windows Update page for the “Enroll Now” link. That will take you to the three options, and then you can select one and enroll.
Right now, we expect that users need to do this by October 13, the day before the end-of-life cutoff. I would hope all users will see the link some time this month.
The good news for Microsoft is that after something of a dead cat bounce, with Windows 10 expanding its market share last month at the expense of its newer sibling, sanity has been restored and Windows 11 is on the rise again. That said, 44% of the user base is still using Windows 10, meaning an alarming 600 million users need to act.
Microsoft doesn’t want you to take the ESU option unless you have to, with a PC that doesn’t meet the hardware hurdles and so can’t upgrade. Its advice remains that “you update your devices to the latest version of Windows 11” if you can.
