Tag: windows 10

While Microsoft has its own tool for checking if a PC meets the system requirements of its Windows 11 operating system, it is generally considered rather heavy and not overly useful.

If you have come to the same conclusion, you may prefer an open source alternative that is both free and lightweight.

WhyNotWin11 is developed by serial developer Roby C. Mahel, whom you may know for his work on MSEdgeRedirect and other open source apps already.

The main purpose of WhyNotWin11 is simple: check, if your PC meets the system requirements to find out if you can upgrade without hassles.

All you need to do is download the app and run it. No installation, no ads, nothing that is considered bloat.

The app runs its checks on start automatically and presents its findings to you in its interface after a short moment.

Note that you can run the app on Windows 11 as well. Handy, if you installed the operating system and used bypasses for certain requirements.

The program color codes results. Green checkmark tell you that everything is fine, but you will also known if a component does not meet Windows 11’s minimum requirements.

WhyNotWin11 does not prioritize certain components over others, which could improve usability. Arguably, some checks are more important than others. For instance, the CPU or TPM version checks, while others, like CPU frequency, may not be as important, at least not for making upgrade decisions.

Still, it is easy enough and you see at a glance if your system fails to meet requirements. You can hover over the i-icon next to an entry to find out more about it.

WhyNotWin11 does not provide suggestions or tips to resolve compatibility issues. You find a few help guides in settings though. These explain how to enable secure boot or the TPM. There is also a link to the official Windows 11 requirements and to skipping some of the checks.

All guides open websites though.

Closing Words

WhyNotWin11 is a handy open source tool to quickly check the Windows 11 compatibility of a PC. It is a portable app, which means that you can run it without installation. Ideal for placing it on a USB tools collection and carrying it around whenever you do some troubleshooting work.

Now You: do you use lightweight open source tools like WhyNotWin11 regularly? Feel free to highlight apps that you recommend in the comments below.

Many Windows 10 users are eying the Extended Security Updates program for the operating system to extend support by a year. Microsoft announced the program for home users for the first time, and while it decided to limit it to a single year, it may be enough to buy users some time or help them keep on using their trusted PCs.

Microsoft revealed that users had three options to join the ESU program on Windows 10:

• Pay about $30 to receive updates for another year.
• Pay with Microsoft Rewards points.
• Enable the cloud backup functionality of Windows Backup.

While two of the three options do not require any money to change hand, you’d still have to either pay with accumulated points or allow Microsoft to transfer some files to the cloud.

Microsoft announced a new option this week. This one only for users from the EEA region, which includes all EU member states, Norway, Liechtenstein, and Iceland. Microsoft said that users from these countries could join ESU for Windows 10 without completing any of the three options that users from any other region in the world had at their disposal.

This sounded like a great deal on paper for users from the region. However, Microsoft has added another requirement. Users need to sign in with a Microsoft account regularly to stay subscribed.

Here are the details:

• You need to sign in with a Microsoft account for an opportunity to join ESU and start receiving security updates after October 2025.
• You need to do this every 60 days. Microsoft stops delivering ESU-updates to a machine, if no Microsoft account sign-in was recorded in that period.
• Windows 10 users may rejoin ESU by signing in with a Microsoft account again.

This affects Windows 10 users who sign in with local accounts. They need to make sure that they sign in with a Microsoft account every other month to keep on getting the extended security updates.

Microsoft plans to end the program for home users on October 13, 2026. There is a slim possibility that Microsoft might get pressured into extending the program, at least in some regions, but I would not hold my breath.

Now You: Are you using PCs with Windows 10? What is your plan going forward?

When Microsoft released the August 2025 security updates for Windows, it listed not a single known issue for any of the supported operating systems. Now, a week later, Microsoft had to confirm several issues already.

The latest to be added to the growing list is that reset and recovery operations may fail on some older versions of Windows.

Microsoft confirmed the issue for the latest version of Windows 10, which is version 22H2, and for Windows 11, version 23H2 and earlier. Only client operating systems are affected, according to Microsoft.

​Client: Windows 11, version 23H2; Windows 11, version 22H2; Windows 10, version 22H2; Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC 2021 and Windows 10 IoT Enterprise LTSC 2021; Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC 2019 and Windows 10 IoT Enterprise LTSC 2019

If you still run one of these and have the latest security updates installed for the operating systems, you may run into issues when you try to reset or recover the PC.

Microsoft says that three processes are affected by the issue:

• System >Recovery > Reset my PC
• System > Recovery > Fix problems using Windows Update
• RemoteWipe CSP

Run any of those, and the reset or recovery operation may fail, provided that the most recent update is installed. To get around this, you could uninstall the security update before running reset or recovery actions on the Windows PC.

Microsoft confirmed that it is working on a resolution and that it plans to release an out-of-band patch for affected versions of Windows to address the issue. The company plans to release the update “in the coming days” according to the confirmation on the Release Health website for affected Windows editions.

If you still run Windows 10 on one or multiple of your PCs, you may be aware that Microsoft is ending support for the operating system in about two months.

Come October 2025, Microsoft won’t release updates for the consumer editions of Windows 10 anymore. Windows 10 users may join the Extended Security Updates program to receive another year of support, but this requires becoming active.

If you do not do anything, you won’t receive any updates anymore for the operating system after October 2025.

Joining ESU is a simple process, but you still need to pick one of the available “payment” options: pay with Microsoft Rewards points, enable cloud backups, or pay with money.

Consumer ESU Enrollment is a new script for Windows that simplifies the process. It does require an administrative account and Internet connectivity, but that is about it.

When you run it without parameters, it will enroll using the free backup option and use a Microsoft account or a local account for that, depending on which you used to sign in to the operating system.

Here is what the developer Abbodi says about the order on GitHub (via Deskmodder):

By default, the script will run in the following order, if a step failed, the next is executed:

• Enroll using Microsoft account currently logged-in as Windows user.
• Enroll using Microsoft account currently logged-in with Microsoft Store.
• Enroll using current Local account.
• Acquire Consumer ESU license manually as last resort.

You may run the script using optional parameters to force one of the available options. If you use a local account, you can run .\Consumer_ESU_Enrollment.ps1 -Local to make sure that you are enrolled using the local account and not a Microsoft account.

Note that you may need to run Set-ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Scope Process -Force prior to that to allow the execution of unsigned scripts temporarily.

While you may enroll manually as well, using the script may speed up things significantly, especially if you use a local account to sign in to Windows.

Now You: do you still run Windows 10 on a device that you use regularly? Did you join ESU? Feel free to leave a comment down below.

Microsoft’s newest — if you consider four years new – has finally done it. It has passed Windows 10 as the most popular desktop operating system last month.

The consumer versions of Windows 10 have less than three months of support left. While you can extend that by a year, the end is inevitable at this point.

Statcounter reports that Windows 11 made a big jump to more than 53 percent usage share while Windows 10 dropped to a still respectable 43 percent share.

It appears that users are finally moving from Windows 10 to 11, either by upgrading compatible devices to the new version of Windows or by buying new PCs with Windows 11. There is also a third possibility. Since Statcounter does not reveal totals, Windows 10 devices could just have been taken offline by their respective owners or users.

Is the change in leadership the big win that Microsoft hoped Windows 11 would become? Or just born out of necessity, considering that Microsoft will end support for Windows 10 in a short while?

It seems likely that the trend will continue in the following months. Windows 10 will drop, Windows 11 will rise as a consequence.

It is interesting to note that Windows 10 managed to keep the lead until last month. Almost half of all desktop devices ran the operating system and users have started to migrate mere weeks before the official end of support.

In related news, Windows 7 still holds about 2 percent of the desktop market, more than two years after Microsoft ended the ESU program and more than five years since support ended officially.

Windows 8 and 8.1 are also listed, with a combined share of about 1 percent of the desktop market. May not sound like much, but if you assume more than 1 billion desktop PCs, you end up with 10 million Windows 8 and 8.1 devices still in use.

As far as desktop operating systems are concerned, Windows continues to have a commanding lead of more than 71 percent of the market. Unknown, meaning device with unidentifiable operating systems, macOS and Linux follow behind, each with less than 10 percent of the usage share.

Now You: do you run Windows on your devices or another operating system? Let me know in the comments below.

What is with Windows operating systems and issues with the default encryption software Bitlocker? Last year, Windows 11 users suffered from the issue after installation of certain updates for their systems.

Now, Microsoft is confirming a similar issue for users of the Windows 10 operating system.

The details:

• The update in question is KB5058379, the May 2025 cumulative update for Windows 10, version 22H2.
• It affects Windows 10 systems with Intel 10th generation or later vPro processors that use Intel Trusted Execution Technology (TXT)
• An automatic repair is triggered on affected systems after installation of the update. This may require the entering of the BitLocker recovery key to proceed with the automatic repair.

Microsoft confirmed the issue on the official Windows 10, version 22H2 health dashboard. There, the company writes:

We are aware of a known issue on devices with Intel Trusted Execution Technology (TXT) enabled on 10th generation or later Intel vPro processors. On these systems, installing the May 13, 2025, Windows security update (KB5058379) might cause lsass.exe to terminate unexpectedly, triggering an Automatic Repair. On devices with BitLocker enabled, BitLocker requires the input of your BitLocker recovery key to initiate the Automatic Repair.

Affected devices may enter one of two states according to Microsoft:

• They may try to install the update for Windows 10 several times before Startup Repair rolls back to the previous version of Windows 10.
• Startup Repair may run into an error on some devices, which ultimately will trigger the Bitlocker recovery screen.

The first state should not require extensive troubleshooting or frantic searching for the Bitlocker recovery key. You can consult this Microsoft support page that lists all options to look up the recovery key.

System administrators may notice the following additional symptoms on affected devices:

• ​Event ID 20 might appear in the Windows Event Viewer in the System event log, with the following text: “Installation Failure: Windows failed to install the following update with error 0x800F0845: 2025-05 Cumulative Update for Windows 10 22H2 for x64-based Systems (KB5058379).”
• ​Event ID 1074 might appear in the System event log, with the text: “The system process ‘C:\WINDOWS\system32\lsass.exe’ terminated unexpectedly with status code -1073740791.”

Microsoft is working on a resolution for the issue and plans to release an out-of-band update once that administrators may install on affected devices. The company says that it plans to release the update in the coming days on the Microsoft Update Catalog website.

Users and administrators should monitor the issue on the Microsoft Health dashboard website for updates.

Microsoft plans to end support for several editions of Windows 10 this October. While customers may subscribe to extended security updates to extend support by one (home) or up to three (business / Enterprise) years, it was unclear how Microsoft would handle support for some of its other products and services running on Windows 10, including Microsoft 365.

Do Windows 10 customers, who run apps like Word or Excel after October 14th, 2025, get support when they run into issues? What about software updates? These customers pay Microsoft for access after all.

A new blog post by Microsoft provides answers to these questions and others that customers may have.

Will Microsoft 365 continue to work after Windows 10’s end of support date? Microsoft says yes. Apps like Word or Excel will continue to work. The company notes, however, that running the apps on an unsupported operating system may lead to performance and reliability issues. Microsoft recommends to switch to Windows 11 to avoid these.

For how long will Microsoft support Microsoft 365 on Windows 10? Microsoft plans to release security updates for Microsoft 365 apps under Windows 10 for three years starting the day support ends officially. This seems to imply that the applications won’t receive feature updates anymore. Whether that is indeed the case remains to be seen. Support will end on October 10th, 2028 either way.

Support is limited on Windows 10. While Microsoft promises to support Microsoft 365 apps on Windows 10 for another three years with security updates, it is limiting support in other areas. When customers encounter bugs that affect the Windows 10 version only, Microsoft support will ask the customer to make the switch to Windows 11.

Microsoft limited Office support in the past on Windows systems that ran out of support.

In closing, Microsoft 365 customers may continue to use apps like Word or Excel after support ends. Microsoft will provide security updates for three years, but does not guarantee much besides that.

Now You: do you use Microsoft Office or Microsoft 365? Are you affected by the end of support for Windows 10?

For years, Microsoft has warned Windows 10 customers that the operating system is reaching its end of support in October 2025. Did you know that this is only the cause for specific editions of Windows 10 and that there are numerous other editions that Microsoft will continue to support for years after 2025?

Depending on the Windows 10 edition, support may end in 2026, 2027, 2029, or 2032. That’s right, there is one edition that will receive updates for another 7 years.

The good folks over at Deskmodder have created a list of the different Windows 10 editions and their end of support. Here it is, translated into English:

October 14th, 2025:

• Windows 10 (22H2) Home/Pro
• Windows 10 (22H2) Enterprise and Education
• Windows 10 2015 LTSB (First Windows 10 version)
• Windows 10 IoT Enterprise (First Windows 10 version)
• Windows 10 IoT Enterprise LTSB 2015 (First Windows 10 version)

October 13th, 2026:

• Windows 10 2016 LTSB
• Windows 10 IoT Enterprise LTSB 2016

January 12th, 2027

• Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC 2021

January 9th, 2029

• Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC 2019
• Windows 10 IoT Enterprise LTSC 2019

January 13th, 2032

• Windows 10 IoT Enterprise LTSC 2021

All listed Enterprise editions will continue to receive support until they reach their end of support date. This means that they do not need ESU, extended security updates, for that.

ESU is only for Windows 10 Home and Pro customers who want to extend support by a year, and for Windows 10 Enterprise or Education customers, who may extend support by up to three years.

Hacks circulated in the past that allowed users of out-of-support operating systems to install updates designed for still-supported versions and editions of the same operating system. It seems likely that hacks will be discovered to allow the same on Windows 10 machines.

Now You: Are you affected by the end of support for Windows 10? If so, what do you plan to do? If not, which operating system do you run on your devices?