The end of Windows 10 support is not about Windows 11; it's about stampeding everyone on to OneDrive cloud storage - either as a pure money-maker, and/or to extend geopolitical reach.
Microsoft has to patch Windows 10 anyway
Consider: If Windows 10 will have code repair updates developed against exploitability for those who choose to buy extended support for three years, then that work has to be done anyway. Extending update delivery to systems is the same cost, whether they are on Windows 10 or 11. A wider pool of Windows 10 users may mean more niche testing, but also means more involuntary testers, making it easier and quicker to find out what needs fixing next.
In the worst-case scenario, a massive exploitable base of unpatched Windows 10 systems could pose risk to everything connected to the Internet, which may compel Microsoft to "support" (fix) all those systems.
Folks aren't joyously flooding to Windows 11, throughout years of ongoing development, right up to these final days before Windows 10 (and Windows 11 23H2 and older) go out of support. Many systems are disqualified due to TPM 2.0 and other requirements, but others are simply user refusal, as well as the inertia of large managed networks.
In response, Microsoft offers Extend Security Updates (ESU) programs to both professional networks administrators and consumers. The "pro network" crowd have to pay, but a new "free" option has been added for consumers that looks too good to be true... and is.
Baked-in ransomware
If you allow the Windows Out Of Box Experience (OOBE) to lead you by the nose ("a little WiFi here, a little sign-in there"), then this is what happens:- you sign in to an online Microsoft Account
- your internal storage is encrypted without your knowledge or consent
- the encryption key is available only from your online Microsoft Account
- all appears to work as normal, so you don't get the key you didn't know you'd need
Now if that smells like a ransomware attack, that's because it is exactly that. Microsoft doesn't extort money upfront, payment doesn't involve complicated crypto currencies, and it's not about payment anyway; it's about the option to deny access, either for breach of the vendor's private law (the EUL"A" that no-one reads) or at the behest of US policy, such that sanctions can apply to data as well as money.
Data survivability is now brittle, as various local situations can trigger a demand for the key:
- you need to boot into Safe Mode
- you need to access your storage from a different system
- something glitches the TPM, e.g. a firmware ("BIOS") update
There may be server-side issues too, e.g. your online account is hacked, or deleted by the vendor, or you follow advice to discard the account to use a Local account instead, or your account hasn't been signed in for "too long", or the vendor or US policy applies a "data sanction" on you.
Theft-to-cloud as "backup"
Backup is actually a hard problem; the aim is to keep all wanted data changes, while excluding all unwanted changes - a mix of sheep and goats, needles in the haystack. Strategies vary, but always involve multiple copies of data such that if one is afflicted, the other is available to restore.
Sync is the opposite of backup; if anything bad happens on any one system, that unwanted change is immediately propagated to all systems. The server beyond your reach is now the dog, and all "your" devices are now its chew-toys. Whatever entity signs into that online account is deemed to be "you", and shares some control with the vendor; if you're locked out, sorry for you!
Once you get past the OOBE (if not before), you're pestered to "backup" to OneDrive. If you swallow the bait, the content of many shell folders is automagically copied to the OneDrive cloud storage service, while what you see locally as your files may appear to work, but in reality may have been replaced with stubs to online files, "to save space". Just like automatic Device Encryption, this payload is hidden, with delayed effects that arise when you try to work offline, and "your" files aren't found within the large cache footprint that the cloud service uses as an ashtray.
So, now your data is exfiltrated, local copies destroyed, and you're even more vendor-dependent. When you run out of free space at the server end, you'll have to pay up for more space, or buy some other service that bundles the extra space you need.
This is a straightforward hook-and-reel-in sales scam, similar to a time-bombed "free trial" that lasts just long enough to create data you can't use unless you pay (especially Outlook's .pst walled garden). That's a significant incentive to the vendor, leaving aside any geopolitical implications.
You can use Windows 11 safely
As at August 2025, there are ways to skirt these risks while still upgrading to Windows 11 for more effective ongoing support. There are ways to break into the OOBE to trigger a restart that will add small links for "I don't have Internet" and "Continue with limited setup"; there are ways to craft a bootable USB installer that bypasses various compatibility checks and onerous UI pressures. As long as you can install Windows 11 and run the OOBE while safely not connected to the Internet, you have the potential to be safe; staying that way requires ongoing resistance to embedded sales pitches.
There are also ways to block Device Encryption by policy, as applies via a .reg import or direct Regedit; to hide OneDrive, or at least stop it reducing your files to online pointer stubs, and so on. If Device Encryption is already in effect, you can step over the scary warning to turn that off; maybe it will take a long time, as the warning states, or maybe not - the whole process is so opaque (or transparent, in that one sees through it even if trying to see it is harder) that I've no idea if it completes as quickly as it seems, or if it grumbles along unseen for hours or days.
Upgrade carefully, if system is compatible
In my opinion, it's better to carefully upgrade Windows 10 to 11, after suitable backups, as long as your system is compatible, than stay on Windows 10. It's also a good time to upgrade the OS hard drive to a speedier SSD, as that way the original hard drive can be your "undo" fallback backup.
If your system is incompatible, you may be able to force the upgrade via Rufus or similar tools, and/or more manual methods - but I'd be reluctant to do that. "Hard" incompatibilities include PopCnt instruction and SSE 4.2 support; without these, Windows 11 24H2 (the minimum version supported after October 2025) will likely BSoD on boot.
Some of the softer requirements may be attained by changing partitioning from MBR to GPT, changing boot mode from CSM BIOS emulation to UEFI, enabling Secure Boot, and enabling TPM, either as such, or drilling down into CMOS Setup to where the processor vendor implements this as a fTPM.
So far, so good - but if you can't pass the PC Health Check or the Windows 11 Installation Assisitant won't install, then you'd have to resort to an "unsupported" state via bypass methods e.g. Rufus. I don't see a great future there; the PC may be fine, until some update or annual new version starts to invoke things that are not there, which could leave the system unable to run, or even boot up.
"If a bad guy can run code on your system"...
Microsoft's 2000 Ten Immutable Laws of Security still make sense to me, even if the battle to keep our computers "Personal" has long been lost. The list has been weaseled to pass off "the cloud" (= other people's computers) as safe enough, but the original is here. The first Law:
"If a bad guy can persuade you to run his program on your computer, it's not your computer anymore"
I'd show you the rest of the laws, virtually all of which are broken by the unwanted intimacy of current vandor (vandal/vendor) practice, but the WayBack archive page first bordered on the unusable (refreshing banner ad moving the page, refusal to copy selected text to clipbord or print the page), then after coerced "donation", lost where I'd come from and failed to load the page when the URL was re-pasted. Enshittification is certainly not unique to a few big vendors; buggy code is everywhere, and it can be hard to distinguish stupidity from perfidity! Bah, humbug, etc.
Should you trsut your vendor?
At the top of the Trust Stack is the intent of the party to be trusted; at the bottom is the competence to do what they intend to do. There have been updates that either trashed data completely, or accidentally placed it out of reach, raising concerns about the bottom of the trust stack, as if the need to constantly fix code via "updates" wasn't enough.
Most of the links are about a scenario where the user profile subtree in C:\Users was shunted off and replaced with a new profile, so at least the files could be found... unless they couldn't in some cases. However, I remember a much harder crisis where user data was deleted completely, not in the recycle bin, due to a side-effect related to... OneDrive (formerly called SkyDrive, until someone watched the Terminator movies and suggested a branding change).
It is utterly indefensible for a code vendor to delete user data, no matter what they were trying to do with it; the sheer arrogance beggars belief. Moving directory file entries to a C:\Windows.old is one thing, but to delete completely and irreversibly, is quite another risk to take with what is not yours.
So... should you trust the "man behind the curtain"? After all, well-resourced professionals with a large budget should keep their servers running more reliably than a home user's system, and you may feel that is true for you.
But leaving aside vendor priorities and intent, the fact is that there's nothing magical about what the cloud is made of; it's all stacked layers of code with significant error rates, whether it's the cross-platform compilers, the microcode squirted into what used to be "hard logic" processors, a UEFI as complex as Windows 95 (or "extensions" thereof), the firmware within off-processor components as complex as MS-DOS, web browsers and the unwashed junk they have to run, or the strapping together of these things in de-featured web Apps and PWAs.
We have no insight into what goes on in cloud servers; the fixes, emergency kludges, crises narrowly avoided or not, the data loss affecting "only a few users", etc. until a Cloudflare mess wakes us up.
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