Six Microsoft Deadlines Land on One Tuesday. Here’s What October 13 Means for Your Business.
On Tuesday, October 13, Microsoft’s regular monthly security release doubles as a finish line. Several products reach the end of their current support or update coverage on the same day, and for a lot of small and mid-sized businesses, at least one of them is running somewhere in the office right now.
The tricky part is that nothing on the device will tell you. A Windows 10 PC that falls out of coverage on October 14 boots up exactly the way it did the day before. It simply stops receiving security fixes.
What actually ends on October 13
- Windows 10 Extended Security Updates, Year 1. Windows 10 reached end of support in October 2025. Businesses that enrolled in Microsoft’s paid Extended Security Updates (ESU) program have been receiving critical fixes since then, and the first year of that coverage ends on October 13.
- Windows Server 2012 and 2012 R2. The final year of paid extended updates ends. There is no further paid bridge after this.
- Office 2021. Reaches end of support.
- Office LTSC 2021. Also reaches end of support.
- Windows 11 version 24H2 (Home and Pro). Devices still on this version stop receiving updates until they move to a newer Windows 11 release.
- Windows Server 2022. Leaves mainstream support. Security updates continue under extended support, but the product moves into its maintenance phase.
Why waiting now costs more than it used to
Windows 10 ESU is priced by the year, and the price doubles each year. Year 1 was $61 per device, closer to $45 for machines managed through Intune or Windows Autopatch. Year 2 is $122. Year 3 is $244.
Coverage is also cumulative. A business that enrolls after October 13 has to pay for Year 1 retroactively before Year 2 coverage applies, so the minimum becomes $183 per device. For a 40-person office, that’s the difference between roughly $2,440 and $7,320, before Year 3 is even on the table.
One common misunderstanding worth clearing up: the $30 consumer ESU option does not apply to business PCs.
Why so many businesses are still here
Windows 10 still accounted for about 30% of Windows devices worldwide as of August. That number isn’t a sign of carelessness. Most of those machines run fine. Some can’t meet Windows 11’s hardware requirements. Others sit next to a server that runs a line-of-business application nobody wants to disturb.
“It’s still working” is a reasonable instinct. The catch is that every month of deferral becomes a decision made by default, and October 13 is simply the day that default starts generating invoices and unpatched vulnerabilities.
A practical way to use the next two weeks
- Get an honest count. Which devices are on Windows 10, which are on Windows 11 24H2, which servers are still on 2012 or 2012 R2, and which Office versions are installed.
- Decide device by device. For each machine, the choice is upgrade to Windows 11, enroll in ESU as a short bridge, or retire and replace. Hardware compatibility usually makes the decision for you.
- Treat servers separately. They tend to carry the business-critical application and need the most planning.
- Put the next date on the calendar. ESU Year 2 ends on October 12, 2027.
A useful nuance: Microsoft 365 Apps continue receiving security updates on Windows 10 until October 2028. The operating system underneath them does not.
Where to start
The businesses that handle deadlines like this smoothly aren’t the ones with the biggest IT budgets. They’re the ones who knew exactly what was running before the date arrived. If you don’t have that picture yet, it’s the first thing worth fixing, and it’s a short job with the right help.