A machine that works is easy to ignore. It boots, the labels come out, nobody thinks about it. That is exactly the problem.
What actually happened in October
Windows 10 reached end of support on October 14, 2025. Microsoft's own wording is that PCs running it "will continue to function," but they no longer receive software updates, security fixes, or technical assistance.
Nothing turns off. Nothing beeps. No error message appears. The machine simply stops getting fixed.
That is a strange kind of failure. Most breakdowns announce themselves. This one is silent, and the machine keeps working, which is why it can go unnoticed for a year.
The machines that get left behind
It is usually not the computer at the front desk. It is the one in the back: wired to the label printer, the time clock, the scale, the CNC, or an old copy of accounting software somebody still opens once a month.
Small shops keep these machines because they work. Because the software on them was set up by somebody who is no longer around. Because replacing them means giving up a Saturday nobody has to spare.
Those are the machines most likely to be sitting on an operating system that stopped getting patched a year ago.
An old computer is not the same as an old truck
A 2009 truck that starts every morning is still a 2009 truck. A computer that starts every morning may be carrying a year of publicly documented flaws that nobody has closed.
Microsoft's guidance on this is blunt. Antivirus alone is not enough, because without operating system updates the foundation underneath it keeps getting weaker. Their comparison, not mine: antivirus is a lock on a door, and without updates the doorframe itself may be rotting.
CISA keeps a public catalog of vulnerabilities that attackers are already exploiting in the wild, as opposed to flaws that are only theoretical. As of this week that list holds more than 1,700 entries, and new Microsoft Windows flaws land on it regularly. Every entry on it is a flaw with a fix that already exists. On an unsupported machine, the fix exists and never arrives.
The honest complication
Sometimes you genuinely cannot upgrade that machine. The software running your scale or your CNC may not run on anything newer, and the vendor that wrote it may be gone. Shops get stuck exactly there.
In that case the answer is not a new computer. It is separating that machine from everything else. It gets no email, no web browsing, no access to the shared drive, and it sits on its own piece of the network. It does its one job and touches nothing else. That is not a scare tactic. It is just what you do with a machine you cannot repair.
Microsoft does sell an extension called Extended Security Updates, which keeps critical security fixes arriving on eligible machines for a limited period. It is worth knowing about if replacing a machine has to wait a few months. It adds no new features and includes no general technical support. It is a bridge, not a destination.
What good looks like
Not a project. A list.
Somebody in your business should be able to hand you one page saying: here is every computer we own, who uses it, what operating system it runs, whether that system is still supported, when it last received updates, and when it is due for replacement.
Most small businesses cannot produce that page. Not because anyone is careless, but because nobody has ever been asked to.
Once the list exists, the decisions get small. Three machines are fine. Two should be replaced this year. One is stuck and needs to be walled off. One belonged to somebody who left in 2023 and is still sitting on a shelf with a password taped to it.
The question to ask this week
Walk to the back of the shop and look at the computer nobody thinks about. Ask when it last restarted for an update, and who would notice if it stopped getting them.
If nobody knows, that is your answer.
You do not need new software for most of this. You need to know where you stand.