Still Using Windows 10? Here’s How to Get Another Year of Updates for Free

Officially, Microsoft will stop providing new security updates for Windows 10 PCs after October 14, 2025, a little over a decade after its initial release. It's a stick that Microsoft is using to push upgrades to the newer Windows 11, whether you install it on a PC you already have or buy a brand-new PC to meet Windows 11's system requirements.

But if you can't or don't want to upgrade to Windows 11, Microsoft has made it reasonably simple to get an extra year of Extended Security Updates (ESUs) for Windows 10, extending its official support window to October 2026. But this won't happen automatically; users will need to enroll their PCs in the ESU program to get the updates, using an enrollment feature that Microsoft just released to Windows 10 PCs recently.

For anyone looking to get that extra year of updates, here's how to enroll your PC, how to make sure your PC is enrolled, and how to avoid paying the $30 fee that Microsoft is nominally charging for these updates.

To enroll your PC in the ESU program, you'll need to meet Microsoft's list of requirements and anti-requirements, which we'll summarize here for convenience:

• A PC running Windows 10 Home, Pro, Pro Education, or Workstation with all available updates installed.
• An administrator account.
• A Microsoft account. Even if you usually sign in with a local account, you need a Microsoft account to acquire the ESU license.
• The PC can't be in kiosk mode, joined to an Active Directory domain, joined to Microsoft Entra, or enrolled in any kind of mobile device management (MDM), which will cover a lot of workplace PCs. Microsoft has separate ESU programs for businesses, schools, and other large organizations.

If your PC meets those conditions, you'll enroll in the ESU program by opening the Settings app and clicking Windows Update. You should see a status message telling you that Windows 10 updates end in October 2025, with an “enroll now” link you can click to enroll in the Extended Security Updates program.

If you're not already signing in with a Microsoft account, you'll be asked to use one here. This can be temporary, if you want it to be—once you've enrolled a given PC, you can sign back out of the Microsoft account and still get the ESUs. But you'll need an account every time you enroll a new PC, or if you do a fresh install of Windows 10 on your PC and need to re-enroll.

There are three ways to get an ESU license: You can pay a $30 one-time purchase, you can redeem 1,000 Microsoft Rewards points, or you can back up settings with the Windows Backup app.

Of these, the Backup app is the most painless; it backs up some saved credentials, some Windows settings, and some Windows apps to your account. It can also back up folders you specify, if your account has the space for them (the paltry 5 GB you get for free won't be good for much, but it's there).

I had already used the Windows Backup app with my Microsoft Account at some point in the past, so I was automatically offered free enrollment into the ESU program. Whichever option you choose, click the Enroll button, and your PC will be signed up for the extra year of updates.

A status message in the Windows Update app will confirm that your PC has been enrolled. You'll get security updates for Windows itself through October 2026, and Microsoft has separately committed to providing Microsoft Defender Antivirus definitions updates and security updates for supported Microsoft Office versions through at least 2028.

We know that some of you want absolutely nothing to do with a Microsoft account, despite the company's push to require one as a precondition of using any version of Windows 11. If this describes you, the good news is that you can enroll in the ESU program without needing to stay enrolled in Windows Backup or without staying signed in to a Microsoft account at all.

To stop using Windows backup, navigate to Settings, Accounts, and click Windows backup, and turn off all the toggles to stop future backups from happening. You should be able to clear any previous backup settings by going to your Microsoft account settings in a web browser, navigating to the Devices tab, scrolling to the bottom, and clicking “Clear stored settings.” Any files synced via OneDrive can be managed via its web interface.

To sign out of a Microsoft account altogether, navigate to Settings, Accounts, and the Your Info tab. There, you should either be able to click a link labeled “sign in with a local account instead” or “stop signing in to all Microsoft apps automatically,” depending on how you signed in in the first place. After swapping back to a local account, you can also navigate to Settings, Accounts, and the Email & Accounts tab and remove any Microsoft accounts you see here if you don't want to use them for Edge or other Windows apps on your PC.

Even after removing all vestiges of all Microsoft accounts from your PC, you'll still see the “your PC is enrolled to get Extended Security Updates” status message on the Windows Update page. We'd prefer to be able to get the updates without the rigmarole, but for people who can't or don't want to install Windows 11, the extra year of security patches is worth 10 or 15 minutes of irritation.

This story originally appeared on Ars Technica.