- Just ten months until Windows 10 reaches end-of-life.
- E-waste for old hardware.
- Cybersecurity nightmare caused by Microsoft.
The majority of Windows 10 users will stop receiving support from Microsoft in October this year – in ten months, at the time of writing. According to Statcounter Global data, more than 61% of Windows systems worldwide still run the operating system, placing these machines in the unenviable position of no longer receiving security updates.
When Windows 7 was due to be end-of-lifed at the end of 2020, more than 70% of installations had upgraded to Windows 10 a year before. Unlike five years ago, there were no “non-negotiable” hardware stipulations on which PCs could be upgraded. The big sticking point that Microsoft has engineered is that Windows 11 won’t run without an in-built TPM 2.0 hardware chip, something that requires many users to purchase new machines.
Users continuing to run Windows 10 will do so without the monthly security patches released by Microsoft which help keep the operating system safer from newly-discovered bugs and security flaws. Consumers will have the option to extend the security patching facility by an extra year by paying Microsoft $30.
The situation places organisations in a difficult position. Replacing PC fleets with new hardware will create enormous amounts of potential e-waste, require staff training to acclimatise users with the new version of the operating system, stop using software that won’t run on Windows 11, re-engineer mission-critical applications or bear the costs of finding and deploying alternative software to replace legacy applications.
By not upgrading hardware and continuing to use Windows 10, individuals and organisations will be placing themselves at significantly increased risk from cyber attackers, and see support for third-party applications gradually whither.
The necessary changeover will come as no surprise to most Windows 10 users, as the operating system has been becoming increasingly vociferous in its on-screen reminders to upgrade. But nagware doesn’t have the ability to create TPM 2.0 chips that solder themselves to PC circuit boards, nor does it ensure applications will continue to function after the operating system upgrades itself to version 11.
Microsoft’s advice (apart from users evaluating their hardware to see if an upgrade is physically possible) is that organisations should “plan and budget for upgrades.” If such plans exist, they seem to be slow in execution in the majority of cases.
According to the Free Software Foundation, “this is a (Microsoft-manufactured) problem for users.” It urges its supporters to share the GNU/Linux operating system “with someone you know,” which “could start a journey towards freedom – in addition to saving yet another perfectly functioning computer from becoming e-waste.”
Given that it looks unlikely that a sizeable majority of the world’s PCs will soon be running Windows 11 and thus receiving security updates, we can expect a significant uptick in cybersecurity incidents beginning October 2025. Expected moves by the US administration to cut red tape and free big technology companies from regulation may well exacerbate the situation.
The US administration is proactively cloaking potential cybersecurity breaches [paywall] as emanating from China, but the position many PC users worldwide may find themselves in is one deliberately caused by a large, American corporation.
Microsoft’s purported motive behind a TPM hardware-contingent operating system upgrade is security. Either its motives are disingenuous (something the FSF claims) or its current stance on hardware requirements for Windows 11 is crassly unrealistic.
