Just enrolled for Win 10 updates for another year - NO CHARGE

I just put 25H2 over mine.

Project isn't really finished, as the ReagentC needs to be unhooked and a PushButtonReset for the recovery partition done. I was too stupid to fix that when I had a chance.

It doesn't have an MSA, doesn't have Backup that they advertise enabled. It's otherwise pretty boring. There is no TPM chip on it, but it does have a UEFI BIOS for booting.

As a 4th generation machine, it is well short of being an 8th or 9th generation machine, which is why some of the OS design slows it down.

I have another machine where I "used a script" to enroll in the ESU.

ConsumerESU-master.zip COnsumer_ESU_Enrollment.ps1 21635 bytes (contains the ESU logic for four different methods of activation) Consumer_ESU_Enrollment_run.cmd 190 bytes (used to UnRestrict powershell)

I'm not in the EEA and it didn't cost me a thing to enroll on the machine used to test that script. The machine isn't a daily driver, and I'll be checking in on it to see if the enrollment really works. The enrollment status is on the upper right of the Windows Update page of Settings.

Paul

I run 8.1 on one of my PCs, prefer it to 10. Will stick to 10 on others,

provided you sync something, this is the trigger for free updates world wide.

Nope, I enrolled mine for free before the deadline.

Dave

There is still time to enroll. The date is basically related to the Patch Tuesday of this month.

Still running XP on a windows VM. Maiml to suppoert and old version of Corel draw that does everything I need.

Or you can create a new hotmail address, if you can think of a suitably obscure one.

Or possibly further down.

There's another option which I'm considering. A company called 0Patch is offering extended security patching for EUR25/yr and aiming to continue this for at least 5 years:

There is a bit of nuance here... MS originally rolled out this program with lots of strings - in particular you had to agree to host all your data in their cloud (OneDrive) as part of the deal. The EU objected to that part and they changed the deal. Now you need to enrol with a MS account, but don't have to remain connected to it or use OneDrive etc. However I believe you still need to login to the MS account at least once every 60 days.

Well Britain isn't in the EEA.

What does "enrolling" mean? I have a Microsoft account (I think); doesn't Windows 10 automatically log into Microsoft?

I'm not going to worry if I don't get security updates. At least there won't be any updates to screw up my system.

News is full of problems in Windows 11 updates.

My laptop does have the hardware requirements for Win11, but do I want Microsoft to use it?

My SSD is only 128 GB. I've added a 64 GB USB3 flash drive and transferred a lot of data on it but there's still not room for Windows

Windows Update for your "regular" Windows 10 stream, stops on Oct.14.

The October 14th Patch Tuesday, may be the last regular Cumulative.

In the past, when you bought Extended Support, it was similar to a licensing thing, where the OS was considered to be on a different stream, and then patches could come in for another year.

In this particular case, if you "Enroll" by Oct.14,2025 , you can receive Patch Tuesday for another year on Windows 10. What you would receive, is a patch for a CVE. On some months, there might be nothing. Maybe you receive five small Cumulatives over the year long period. You should also continue to receive Windows Defender definition files (so the scanner remains updated). Other things, might include certificate updates or revocations. The SChannel is only used by certain programs, and a browser like Firefox does not need the SChannel certificates.

You need at least the July Patch Tuesday, to have the necessary DLL in your Win10 system to support the enrollment process. If the DLL is present, and Patch Tuesday past July are present, then the Enrollment tease will appear in your Settings.

Manually enrolling with the script.

So the sequence would be, at least July 2025 Cumulative, which gives you the DLL that has the controls for setting up Enrollment. Then on a later update, they enable the package that puts up the Enrollment tease.

And finally, if you're enrolled, the status is visible in your Settings.

ConsumerESU-master.zip COnsumer_ESU_Enrollment.ps1 21635 bytes (contains the ESU logic for four different methods of activation) Consumer_ESU_Enrollment_run.cmd 190 bytes (used to UnRestrict powershell)

That script checks whether the Consumer ESU DLL is present. And it makes calls to the DLL, to do the enrollment.

Paul

Believe that if you want. More likely is the Microsoft account gives you free updates so you can prevaricate about updating the software whilst for Microsoft they get plenty of goons feeding them data for their AI training.

TANSTAAFL

Oh, I hadn't seen that requirement anywhere. Not a problem though.