- Windows 10’s extended support offer is currently rolling out
- A fair few people aren’t seeing it, though – myself included
- Microsoft has said that the rollout is happening ‘slowly’ but that it will be available for everyone before Windows 10’s End of Life in October 2025
If you’re running Windows 10 and hoping to get extended support for the OS in order to avoid having to upgrade to Windows 11 come October 2025, you may be wondering exactly where the offer of that support is.
While it’s officially rolling out, as of a month ago in limited form, Windows Latest reports that the extended security updates (ESU) scheme hasn’t reached many people yet.
The button to kick off the enrolment wizard that allows you to sign up for the scheme – which can be done for free, as you may have seen – should appear in the Windows Update panel. However, a good few people – including Windows Latest readers – just aren’t seeing this button at all, so they can’t sign up.
The tech site contacted Microsoft about this and was told by the company that the enrolment wizard is indeed rolling out currently – as was officially announced recently – it’s just that this is happening “slowly”.
There’s nothing you can do to prompt the button to appear in Windows Update; you just have to wait.
Analysis: a seemingly cautious rollout
I am still running Windows 10, and I’m planning to take the offer of extended support (for reasons I’ve discussed in-depth recently), but I also haven’t yet seen it on my PC. There are scattered reports on various online forums from people wondering where the offer is, so it does seem like the rollout is on the cautious and slow side, as Microsoft indicates.
The good news is that Microsoft has assured Windows Latest that the enrollment wizard will arrive on all Windows 10 PCs before the End of Life of the older operating system, which is mid-October 2025. So, it’s just a case of being patient, although personally I’d rather not leave signing up for the program until the last minute.
Hopefully, Microsoft will kick the ESU rollout into a higher gear with the next big update for Windows 10, which arrives on September 9, 2025. We shall see, and perhaps ironing out bugs in the wizard has been part of the issue here – there was a notable glitch whereby the sign-up process was failing for some folks, a problem Microsoft resolved the week before last.
Meanwhile, as Windows Latest points out elsewhere, Microsoft is stepping up its full-screen nags being displayed to Windows 10 users, urging them to upgrade to Windows 11, as of the most recent August update. These are pop-ups that have been seen before, and it’s likely they’ll be fired out again next month and when October rolls around, when support is cut off for those who haven’t signed up for the ESU.
I’m going to avail myself of the free option for extended updates, which requires syncing PC settings to OneDrive, as this is something I already do anyway. For those who’d rather not do so – and remember, it is just your Windows settings, not your files and data that’s synced – they can still pay $30 (or equivalent in their currency) to join the ESU (which was the only option initially).
A third route is to cash in 1,000 Microsoft Rewards points, provided you have accumulated that many.