Windows 10 is reaching the end of support in about a week, with the operating system set to receive its final Patch Tuesday update on October 14, 2025. Both consumers and enterprise customers have the option to extend the life of their OS through the extended security updates (ESU) program, which offers one and three years of security updates, respectively. However, come October 14, certain customers could find themselves in a bit of a predicament.
The thing about Patch Tuesday updates is that they often introduce bugs across Windows 10, Windows 11, Windows Server 2022, and Windows Server 2025. Since we are concerned with Windows 10's end of life (EOL) right now, let's stick with that only for now.
Since August 2025, Microsoft has tracked three bugs for Windows 10, version 22H2. These were related to unexpected User Account Control (UAC) prompts while performing certain operations, issues with NDI streaming performance, and the failure of reset and recovery operations in some configurations. Microsoft managed to fix all of these on or before September's Patch Tuesday updates, which is great.
But the problem with the upcoming Patch Tuesday update is that if it does introduce bugs, Microsoft will not be mandated to fix them since support for Windows 10 will have officially ended on October 14. If you think that enrolling in ESU will get you bugfixes, you're mistaken, as this program only covers security updates, not fixes or enhancements. Microsoft cautions that:
The ESU programme helps reduce the risk of malware and cybersecurity attacks by providing access to critical and important security updates as defined by the Microsoft Security Response Centre (MSRC) for devices running Windows 10, version 22H2. ESU enrollment does not provide other types of fixes, feature improvements or product enhancements. It also does not come with technical support.
What this means is that if you do run into any errors after installing updates on October 14, you're pretty much on your own. In a nutshell, you'll have three options: upgrading to another OS like Windows 11, waiting for third-party fixes, or living with OS bugs. None of them are great options if you really do like Windows 10 and intend to stick with it for as long as possible.
The fact that Microsoft won't provide bug fixes beyond October 14, even if a problem does arise, isn't entirely surprising. Lots of software and OS vendors follow the same practice, but it's particularly tricky in the case of Windows 10 since the OS has hundreds of millions of users even right now, and even the slightest change to it could break something on certain configurations.
Since the hardware running Windows 10 is so diverse, there's certainly a non-zero percent chance that something will break on Patch Tuesday. I'm no conspiracy theorist, so I won't go as far as to suggest that Microsoft will use this opportunity to force Windows 10 customers to upgrade to Windows 11, but just keep this in mind as you apply Patch Tuesday updates next week. Of course, there is the off-chance that a significant bug that is widespread enough may receive an out-of-band update from Microsoft, but don't bank too much on that happening.
8 Comments
Load the comments and join the conversation!
Read the comments, ask the editors questions, show respect and join the conversation.