- The Help page for Surface devices has a new banner for Windows 11 upgrades
- Report notes Microsoft’s tweaked ‘hundreds’ of support docs in this way
- Expect this promotional activity to kick into a higher gear still in 2025
Microsoft appears to be on another drive to remind Windows 10 users that their operating system will be out of support next year, and that they should be thinking on what to do about that already.
We’ve seen a few such initiatives of late – since Windows 10 had less than a year left on the clock, back in October – and Windows Latest pointed out a further spurt of activity on this front.
The tech site noticed that on one of Microsoft’s help pages, in this case for troubleshooting the installation of updates for Windows 10 on a Surface device, there’s a new banner at the very top of the page that states: “Support for Windows 10 will end in October 2025.”
That’s followed by a short message advising users: “After October 14, 2025, Microsoft will no longer provide free software updates from Windows Update, technical assistance, or security fixes for Windows 10. Your PC will still work, but we recommend moving to Windows 11.”
To ‘recommend’ is putting it mildly – if you don’t have security updates to patch up vulnerabilities as they appear, you’re really exposing yourself to some major risks when online.
There’s also a ‘Learn More’ button underneath the banner which links through to Microsoft’s hub for advice about out-of-support operating systems (or platforms soon to join this club, namely Windows 10).
Windows Latest further observes that Microsoft has recently tweaked “hundreds of support documents” that pertain to Windows 10 to add this banner, or similar efforts.
Analysis: Time to take action
The idea is obvious enough, then. As 2025 rolls into view, Microsoft is updating pretty much every help article and support page it has for Windows 10, reminding those still on the older OS that it’s time to think about migrating to Windows 11.
Of course, there are more options available than simply upgrading to Windows 11 – which may not be possible for some folks with older PCs that don’t meet the hardware requirements for Microsoft’s newest operating system – and we cover those in our article about preparing for Windows 10 End of Life.
They include moving to a different operating system entirely – such as a Linux distro (maybe one that resembles Windows somewhat) – or paying for an extra year of support (a choice Microsoft has only introduced for consumers with Windows 10).
As 2025 progresses, we can expect more of these banners to appear across Microsoft’s various web pages, no doubt – and Windows 10 users will doubtless get some pretty big nag screens hitting them, too, especially as October 2025 comes close.