Microsoft Needs to Get Serious About Its Windows 10 Upgrade Problem: The Windows 10-pocalypse is a short two years away. On Oct. 14, 2025,
Microsoft will stop issuing security updates for Windows 10 PCs, at
which point most of the world’s PCs—about one billion computers—will be
running a dead operating system, like Windows XP. And most of those computers can’t upgrade to Windows 11.

Microsoft Is Abandoning Most PCs on the Planet

Half of the readers of my Windows Intelligence newsletter
are still using Windows 10 on their primary PC. The one billion
estimate comes from two sources: Microsoft, which has said there are more than 1.4 billion Windows PCs, and Statcounter, which shows that the vast majority of PCs on the planet—more than 70%—run Windows 10.

Worse
yet, this isn’t like when Microsoft stopped supporting Windows 7. Those
PCs could upgrade to Windows 10, but this time around, many Windows 10
PCs don’t suport Windows 11, at least not officially. If you can’t
afford to buy a new PC, you’ll be left out in the cold after Oct. 14,
2025. From a security perspective, it’ll be as if you were using Windows
XP or Windows 7.

Will Microsoft Extend the Deadline?

“That’s the debate of our age,” Paul Thurrott, a journalist who’s spent decades covering Microsoft and owner of Thurrott.com, told me.

Thurrott
pointed out that Microsoft extended support for both Windows XP and
Windows 7, although support for Windows 7 only covered businesses that
paid extra every year. “Honestly, Windows 11 adoption is less than I’d
have thought, especially in businesses. That could cause [Microsoft] to
continue support for Windows 10,” he said.

I asked Microsoft for a
comment on its plans, and a spokesperson said the company had “nothing
further to share at this time” other than what’s on the lifecycle page.