Windows 10 Is Dying: What Happens After October 2025 (And Why You Should Care)

Microsoft is finally pulling the plug on Windows 10 on October 14, 2025. That gives you about six months to stop pretending this isn’t your problem.

It is. It’s yours, it’s mine, and it’s definitely going to be ours when your legacy endpoints start lighting up our dashboards like a Christmas tree in Q4.

If you're still running Windows 10 like it's 2019 and you’re "just waiting to see what happens," let me go ahead and spoil it for you: it ends with a breach and a lot of uncomfortable meetings.

What happens when Windows 10 goes off life support?

• No more security patches. As in, every new vuln stays wide open and uninvited guests start showing up.

• No more bug fixes. Hope you like unexplained error messages and software behaving like it's haunted.

• No more compliance. Auditors aren’t going to care about your transition plan—they’re going to care that you’re running unsupported software.

• New stuff stops working. Surprise, your fancy new app doesn’t want to talk to your ancient OS.

• More legal exposure. When the breach happens (and it will), you'll be asked why you were still running an OS that even Microsoft abandoned.

  
  

Fun. “But it’s probably fine, right?”

Windows 7 went end-of-life and clocked over 200 critical vulnerabilities in the first year. Windows 10? It’s already passed 1,000 known issues while still getting patched. Once support ends, it basically becomes a vulnerability magnet, and nobody’s responsible for plugging the holes anymore.

If your risk strategy includes "maybe no one will notice," I envy your optimism and question your judgment.

What should you be doing right now?

• Upgrade to Windows 11. Don’t wait for perfect timing. There is no perfect timing. There is only before-the-breach and after.

• Lock down your endpoints. If you don’t have an EDR solution deployed, stop reading this and go fix it.

• Audit your environment. Find all the dusty Win10 machines hiding in closets and under desks. They’re going to be your problem real soon.

Final Thought

End-of-life doesn’t mean Windows 10 explodes on October 14. It just becomes less safe every day after that. And every day you delay, you're stacking risk on top of risk and betting on luck instead of basic hygiene.

So yeah, deal with it now—before you’re explaining to your execs why your endpoint upgrade plan lives in a spreadsheet instead of reality. I’ll be in the SOC muting another alert I warned someone about three quarters ago.