1st a big apology – I screwed up, posting that the Win10 EOL was this year. I suffer from a type of Dyslexia – sometimes what I read is not what’s written – so I reread everything, sometimes several times, and sadly this time it didn’t help. [Sometimes it helps to give a 2nd look, hours, or often days later, which is how I discovered my error, and why I’m posting this now, a few days after I originally wrote it.] Again, I Am Sorry.
With that out of the way, Microsoft has revealed some of its pricing for 3 years’ worth of security updates once Win10 does reach EOL in 2025. Big corporations pay big money, but for Education the cost is only $7. That gives consumers a reason to hope [IMHO anyway] that we’ll get a similar price break, but so far Microsoft hasn’t said anything.
zdnet[.]com/article/want-to-keep-getting-windows-10-updates-next-year-heres-what-it-will-cost/
Also, IMHO, most consumers are better off just upgrading to Win11. Win11’s extra hardware requirements just make those Windows security features that use virtualization less painful, but they still hurt performance, so most leave that stuff turned off. While extensive testing by different sites, e.g., Neowin, has not found any real performance difference vs. Win10, my personal experience is that Win11 does outperform Win10 on very low-end hardware, like Intel’s bottom end Atom CPUs, the ones found in the very cheapest laptops for example.
I prefer the upgrade rather than fresh install approach because Win11 drivers are not always available for Win7-10 hardware components. The upgrade process will attempt to migrate existing drivers when new ones are not available in Microsoft’s database. Disabling the hardware check in Win11’s setup routine can be done several ways [just Google], but one of the simplest methods is to replace appraiserres.dll with an empty .txt file with the same name. The free Rufus can do that for you while copying the files in a setup ISO to a USB stick. The only drawback I’m aware of is that you will not be offered Win11 version upgrades in Windows Update on a device that does not meet Win11’s hardware requirements. rufus[.]ie/
One option that was kindly pointed out to me was Windows Long Term Servicing Channel [LTSC], since I have a 32-bit tablet and there is no 32-bit Win11. For Win10 there’s also an identical IoT [Internet of Things] version with another couple years support added. It dates to 2021 – FWIW, the next LTSC version, for Win11, has just leaked:
neowin[.]net/news/windows-11-24h2-ltsc-images-leak-ahead-of-official-announcement/
neowin[.]net/news/microsoft-officially-confirms-windows-11-ltsc-2024-as-the-24h2-release-alongside-kms/
Win10 Enterprise LTSC 2021 is available for both 32-bit and languages other than English, while the IoT version is 64-bit and English only. There is a generic key given at massgrave[.]dev that will switch the LTSC 2021 to the IoT LTSC 2021 but will not activate Windows. There’s another tool on the same site that will. It comes with Very little software bloat [the VM is <7GB], and no Store, which can be added using a script at: github[.]com/kkkgo/LTSC-Add-MicrosoftStore
That all said, my experience trying this out was not at all smooth. I doubt anyone will experience the same problems I encountered, but I think running through them *might* be useful since someone might encounter one or two of the same issues, in which case the fix I used might come in handy.
I started by installing a copy of Win10 fresh in a 32-bit VM I had used for Win7, creating a new, empty VHD [Virtual Hard Disk] in V/Box to hold it. One good surprise was that it self-activated, which from everything I’ve read isn’t supposed to happen. UEFI BIOS is iffy with VirtualBox. What’s supposed to happen is Win10’s setup routine detects EFI and formats the disk accordingly, adding needed partitions along with the EFI bootloader. Turning on EFI in V/Box just didn’t work – it would not even try to boot to the setup ISO – so I left it off. I was able to get Win10 to boot [start] using EFI after using Windows BCDBoot to add the EFI bootloader to the boot partition.
learn.microsoft[.]com/en-us/windows-hardware/manufacture/desktop/bcdboot-command-line-options-techref-di?view=windows-11
The purpose of installing a fresh copy of Win10 and then installing the LTSC version was to perform a trial run of adding the LTSC to my 32-bit tablet. Attempting to I guess I’d say Side-grade to the LTSC 2021 however would not work, with errors saying it couldn’t determine if the hardware was compatible. Though Win10 did start once installed, its setup routine had possibly screwed up. The boot partition was 50MB when Microsoft says it should be 100MB, it was NTFS when it should be FAT32, and the hard disk was MBR rather than GPT.
Connecting this VHD [Virtual Hard Disk] with its new copy of Win10 to a Win11 VM, I converted the hard disk to GPT in AOMEI Partition Assistant. Then I used the portable version of NIUBI Partition Editor Pro [a great app & prior GOTD] to quickly and easily move the system partition 66MB towards the end of the disk. [I’ll explain why 66MB in a moment.] After that I enlarged the boot partition to 100MB & formatted it to FAT32 in AOMEI Partition Assistant, and then again added the boot loader using BCDBoot. However, the boot partition is a special partition, so I also had to use Windows DiskPart to set the correct partition ID – LTSC setup still wouldn’t work, but now the error gave another reason.
learn.microsoft[.]com/en-us/windows-server/administration/windows-commands/set-id
So far so good, there was still one piece missing from the puzzle. When using EFI booting Win10’s setup requires the 16MB Microsoft Reserved partition that normally comes just after the boot partition. While the above page gives that partition’s ID, it also says [correctly] that you cannot set that ID using set id in DiskPart. The only way I found to create that reserved partition was by using DiskGenius -- diskgenius[.]com/
However, that also added another partition after the system partition with Windows on it, which I deleted in AOMEI Partition Assistant. At that point setup for the LTSC would run. Once the LTSC version was running, switched it to the IoT version etc., Windows Update installed several updates, I added the Store, and got a basic copy of Windows that seems to run fine.