Officially, Windows 10 died last month, a little over a decade after its initial release. But the old operating system’s enduring popularity has prompted Microsoft to promise between one and three years of Extended Security Updates (ESUs) for many Windows 10 PCs. For individuals with Windows 10 PCs, it’s relatively easy to get an additional year of updates at no cost.
Or at least, it’s supposed to be. Bugs initially identified by Windows Latest were keeping some Windows 10 PCs from successfully enrolling in the ESU program, preventing those PCs from signing up to grab the free updates. And because each Windows 10 PC has to be manually enrolled in the program, a broken enrollment process also meant broken security updates.
To fix the problems, Microsoft released an update for Windows 10 22H2 (KB5071959) this week that both acknowledges and fixes an issue “where the enrollment wizard may fail during enrollment.” It’s being offered to all Windows 10 PCs regardless of whether they’re enrolled in the ESU program “as it resolves an issue that was preventing affected customers from receiving essential security updates.”
Once the update is installed, the ESU enrollment process should work as intended. Most Windows 10 security and bug-fixing updates from here on out will require you to be enrolled in the ESU program.
Though we’re glad that the ESU program exists as a recourse for people who don’t want to (or can’t) upgrade to Windows 11 or move to some other OS, the fact that PCs must be manually enrolled is still frustrating. But 2025 is, in Microsoft’s own words, “the year of the Windows 11 PC refresh,” and adding a little bit of friction to the enrollment process (rather than just silently and automatically delivering updates for another year) is likely to drive some hardware and software upgrades.
If you do enroll your PC in the ESU program, it only gets you security patches until October of 2026. Businesses, schools, and other large Microsoft customers will be able to pay for a second and third year of updates after that, but those updates aren’t officially being offered to individual users.
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