Windows 10 stopped getting security updates in October 2025. If you took the extra year — Microsoft's Extended Security Updates — that safety net ends on October 13, 2026, and for home users there is no second extension. So the question has a hard deadline again: does the machine you own take Windows 11 free, or is this the moment to replace it?
The answer turns on a security chip and the age of your processor. Checking both takes five minutes, and the result decides everything else on this page.
First, will your machine even take it?
Windows 11 has two requirements that actually knock machines out. The first is TPM 2.0 — a small security chip, built into most computers made since around 2016, that Windows uses to store encryption keys. The second is the processor: Intel 8th generation or newer, AMD Ryzen 2000 series or newer — in plain words, a machine from roughly 2018 onwards. The memory and storage minimums are low enough that almost anything still in daily use clears them.
Two checks, in order:
- Ask Windows. Open Settings, then Windows Update. If the machine qualifies, the page says so and offers the upgrade outright. If it doesn't, Microsoft's free PC Health Check app names the exact requirement that failed.
- Check the chip directly. Press Windows+R, type tpm.msc and press Enter. It tells you whether the chip is present and which version.
The chip that's there but switched off
A common and frustrating case: the chip exists but is disabled in the machine's firmware. Machines that appear incompatible are often perfectly capable once it is enabled — the setting is usually called Intel PTT or AMD fTPM in the BIOS menus. Worth checking before you spend a dollar on a replacement. If poking around firmware settings is not your idea of a good evening, a tech on Koadi can do it over a screen-share in minutes.
The three honest routes
- Upgrade in place. Free, keeps your files and programs. Right for a machine from 2018 or later that already runs well. The walkthrough is below.
- Buy new. Right if the machine is older than about six years, already slow, or has a failing drive or battery. Past a certain age you are paying to keep something alive that will need replacing regardless.
- Neither, deliberately. A machine with no internet connection — a till, a machine driving a piece of equipment, something running software that only exists on Windows 10 — can reasonably stay put, if it is genuinely isolated from the network. That condition is not optional. For everything else still on Windows 10, the remaining options are covered in our guide to the Windows 10 deadline.
The in-place upgrade, start to finish
One rule before anything: back up first. Upgrades almost always go smoothly, and "almost" is doing real work in that sentence. A copy of your files on an external drive or in cloud storage turns a rare disaster into a nuisance — our backup guide shows how in an afternoon.
- Confirm the software you depend on runs on Windows 11. Accounting packages and anything that talks to specialist hardware — label printers, scanners, machine controllers — are where the problems live. Check the vendor's website, not a forum.
- Have your product keys and account logins to hand. You will probably need none of them. Probably.
- Clear some disk space if the drive is nearly full — the installer needs room to keep a copy of the old system for the rollback option.
- Start the upgrade from Windows Update, or with Microsoft's Installation Assistant if Update refuses to offer it. Then leave the machine alone — it will restart several times.
- Allow a couple of hours, and do not do it the morning of something important.
What actually changes on day one
Less than the screenshots suggest. Your files, programs and browser bookmarks are exactly where you left them. What you will notice:
- The Start button moved to the middle. You can put it back on the left in taskbar settings, and most people who hated it did exactly that.
- Right-click menus got shorter. The option you want is sometimes one click further away, behind "Show more options". Muscle memory adjusts in about a week.
- The taskbar is stricter. It lives at the bottom of the screen now — no more parking it on the side.
- Windows pushes a Microsoft account harder. Signing in with one is the path of least resistance during setup, and it does make password recovery easier later.
- Snap layouts. Hover over the maximize button and Windows offers to tile them — the one new feature office users actually keep.
How it runs on 2018-era hardware, honestly
An 8th-generation Intel or Ryzen 2000 machine is the oldest hardware officially allowed in, so it is fair to wonder whether it will drag. The honest answer: on a solid-state drive with 8 GB of memory or more, it runs about the same as Windows 10 did. Day-to-day speed comes from the drive and the memory, not the version number.
On a spinning hard disk, Windows 11 is miserable — but so was Windows 10. If a machine passes the requirements and still feels slow, a solid-state drive and more memory will transform it far more than any Windows version will, for a fraction of the cost of replacement. On an older desktop this is frequently the difference between "needs replacing" and "feels new".
The unsupported-install workaround, and why we don't recommend it
Registry tricks and third-party tools exist to force Windows 11 onto a machine that fails the checks. We don't recommend the route for most people, for three reasons. Microsoft states that unsupported installs are not guaranteed to receive updates — including security updates, which were the whole point of leaving Windows 10. Later feature updates may refuse to install, putting you back where you started. And a machine old enough to need the bypass is usually old enough that the money is better spent on its successor. The exception is a hobbyist machine you can afford to lose; a computer you rely on for work is not that machine.
Upgrading a business fleet: staged, not all at once
If you run an office, the same decision multiplies across every desk, and the classic failure is attempting the lot in one weekend. A staged rollout is boring, and boring is the goal:
- Inventory first. List every machine, its age and whether it passes the Windows 11 checks. This sorts the fleet into "upgrade", "replace" and "isolated exception" before anyone touches anything.
- Pilot on two or three machines — ideally including whoever runs the accounting software. Live with the result for a week or two.
- Roll out in waves, a handful of machines at a time, outside working hours, so one bad upgrade never stops the whole office.
- Fold the failures into your replacement cycle. Machines that can't upgrade become this year's planned purchases — our guide on how often to replace business computers covers the economics, and moving everything to a new machine covers the switch itself.
If you'd rather someone else drove the upgrade
Eligibility checks, firmware settings, a fleet of mixed-age machines — this is bread-and-butter work for the technicians on Koadi. Post the job free in your own words, set a fixed price or take bids from vetted, identity-verified techs, and the money sits in escrow until you approve the result. Upgrades and eligibility checks happen remotely anywhere in the US, evenings and weekends included; for hands-on work like drive swaps or a fleet rollout, local technicians come to you. You watch everything that happens on your screen, and you pay only when it's done.