Posted on 06/27/2025 9:33:59 PM PDT by fireman15
No Copilot, no ads, no bloat, no AI — and seven extra years of official support. It sounds too good to be true, but there's a reason most haven't heard of it.
Microsoft won't advertise it, and you're highly unlikely to stumble across it by accident, but there's a version of Windows 10 that drops the ads, the AI, and will be officially supported for years to come — long after most are forced to upgrade to Windows 11.
For those unaware, Windows 10 is due to be retired by Microsoft on October 14, 2025. Beyond this date, the operating system will lose access to any technical support, future feature drops, and vital security updates.
While your computer will run as normal, and you don't actually need to leave Windows 10 behind, any potential system vulnerabilities discovered after the end-of-support date will remain exploitable forevermore. It'll be open season on your data, hardware, and privacy, and your copy of Windows will be about as secure as a piñata at a party packed with sugar-lusting Little Leaguers.
Microsoft's ideal solution is for Windows 10 users to upgrade to Windows 11. Those whose devices don't meet the operating system's minimum specs can alternatively opt into the company's Extended Security Updates (ESU) program, which offers regular consumers an extra year of security updates for $30.
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It's the version of Windows 10 Microsoft never wanted you to use, and, even though it's entirely capable, it was never designed to run your laptop or desktop machine. Still, that doesn't mean you can't do it anyway.
(Excerpt) Read more at laptopmag.com ...
That is a 2010 CPU. I have never used them but you could make a Raspberry Pi into a luggable computer by adding a 16” portable monitor for abut $80
“And I am happy that you are pleased with your laptop.”
400 nits is 50% why. Plus intel 11th gen i5-i7 mobile CPUs are much better than 10th. And there is a huge production bulge of them out there in laptops, due to the late great Covid 19 era panic. Now they are selling used on eBay.
“We are both perfectly happy with it. Most of our laptops do not have especially bright displays.”
250 NITS and IPS is enough for indoors.
Thanks. I’m aware of such products as I have them where my Win7 is set up to look like Win98.
I have a nice little 1920x1200 portable touch screen monitor. The touch screen feature adds about $20 to the price. I use it with my little Ryzen based mini-computer and also as a second monitor with Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024. It is one of those things that you don't realize how much you needed it until after you get it. Mine came with a very nice articulating stand, but I usually use it with an adjustable tablet holder.
I completed the “upgrade” to Windows 10 IoT Enterprise last night on the “ancient” Lenovo laptop from 2010. The old wireless adapter in it does not recognize the 5ghz band so it made downloading all of the updates more time consuming.
After the installation finished the icons on the desktop were rearranged every time that I rebooted. This is a sure sign of corrupted system files. So, I keyed in “command prompt” in the Windows 10 search box. I chose the option to run the command prompt as an administrator. I then ran the system file checker by keying in:
sfc /scannow
It found errors and corrected them. I then ran the DISM tool which repairs the Windows system image by keying in:
DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth
These commands take just a few minutes to complete.
Then when rebooted the system worked perfectly. After that I entered Disk Cleanup into the Windows 10 search box which took back approximately 30GB of space mostly by erasing the old system.
The old girl is doing really well now, better than it has performed in a long, long time.
I should have mentioned in my original post that running these two commands is almost a necessity after installing a new operating system over the top of an older system.
bookmark
But do you know about the one that makes Win98 look and feel like DOS 4.0?
This is the one that I purchased. It is a 14” with 1920x1200 native resolution. It was on sale at the time. It came with a very nice stand that would cost at least $20 from most sources. I like that it can be powered and get its video signal through a USB3 cable in addition to its HDMI connectors. It did come with a power adapter, but I have never used it. The small size is actually very helpful for the purposes that I use it for.
Many of these portables are high NITS (for outdoors) and have a great selection of sizes and resolutions. I have looked at them. If/when I buy one, I will look at the Amazon reviews. Then buy for less on eBay.
Although I started buying and selling on eBay long ago and still purchase many items through them often... for new items I prefer Amazon for the fast free shipping, easy returns and better warranty coverage.
I made the mistake of purchasing a large Chinese backpack blower through Walmart.com last year. The thing has been sort of a nightmare. I didn’t realize that it was coming from a private seller and my return options were basically non-existent.
I am sorry I forgot to put the link to the one that I purchased.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DPGYRL4C
It is nothing out of the ordinary and I don’t think that the backlighting is especially powerful, but it works well for what I do with it. I love the stand that came with it for many purposes.
Yeah very versatile stand for your portable monitor. The portable monitors are such good laptop extenders. Giving you more screen real estate for cheap. While not taking up much space. I bet they are used all over China, Korea, Thailand and Asia.
If you were shepherding Win10 EOL for “completely inappropriate hardware” you would not be so glib. Tell your buddie Satya he sucks the Chrome off a trailer hitch...
Welcome to the thread. We were all wondering when you would show up.
Microsoft does not care a bit about Linux builds, three of which I use every day in my home server hobby lab. There are close to a Billion machines still running Windows 10. Microsoft wants to force their users to migrate to Windows 11 and new hardware. What they do not want is for people to find solutions that will enable them to keep using Windows 10 safely on their old hardware.
It is you who are doing the bidding of your Microsoft overlords whether you realize it or not. I am very comfortable using commands and running routines in a terminal in Linux. Many people here do not even know what that means... Yet if you do not understand how to use a terminal in Linux it severely hampers your ability to use the operating system... Or maybe you are an Apple fan boy who enjoys throwing money at technological toys that you do not really understand. Which is it?
This error actually does not matter because it corrects itself... probably during the install, but possibly when sfc /scannow and DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealt are run as an administrator in the command line. It turns out that the release ID in the registry should be 2009 and not 2H21 as I and the person in the video have told people to do.
Running Regedit as an administrator navigate to...
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion
now change to the values to the new ones listed below by double clicking on the Key Names:
Key Name = New Value
CompositionEditionID = IoTEnterpriseS
CurrentBuild =19044
CurrentBuildNumber = 19044
DisplayVersion = 21H2
EditionID = IoTEnterpriseS
ProductName = Windows 10 IoT Enterprise LTSC 2021
ReleaseId = 2009
I am going to write up a summary probably this evening. After installing and licensing Windows 10 IoT Enterprise 2021 LTSC seven times, and now having numerous friends and relatives wanting me to upgrade their machines remotely... I have come up with a few more pearls of wisdom.
I have received positive feedback and at least one person here has told me he did an install and is happy with it. My guess is that as in the past, when Microsoft figures out that people are doing an end run around their evil intentions that they will try to take some type of action to keep it from continuing to happen. I suppose that the more people who take this route the more likely that they are to do something about it... So, my evangelizing on this subject is probably ending with this thread.
This solution creates an operating system that behaves so closely what people are currently using that it is quite amazing. The only thing that I have done to make sure that everything is copesetic in my installs after all the updates have been installed is run: sfc /scannow or DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealt in the command line as an administrator. After that I run Microsoft’s included Disk Cleanup to get back around 30GBs of hard drive space.
That's great to hear. Always feels good to have helped a fellow FReeper make headway against the winds.
> ...when Microsoft figures out that people are doing an end run around their evil intentions that they will try to take some type of action to keep it from continuing to happen
? Yeah, they do that, if it affects their sales or bottom line enough. My guess is this hack (in the good sense of "hack") is probably safe, because it's not something every Windows user will be inclined to undertake.
Thanks for the quick reply... there is a lot of misinformation spread in other forums and on YouTube about how this works. There is a tiny bit of work and quite a bit of patience involved in this transition. But I am working on reinstalling a Windows 11 Pro virtual machine in Hyper-V and it is significantly more complicated.
The problem is that I have been a computer and electronics hobbyist for most of the past 50 years and despite spending a lot of time assisting others... I still sometimes have a difficult time judging what others are capable of achieving.
No I am not aware. I never really liked DOS. When Win95 came along it set many new standards and put PC’s in many homes. It was full of bugs, but it opened the doors to what we have today. Win95 crashed often, which wasn’t all bad because I had to learn how to clean a hard drive and reload operating systems. It was a great learning tool for those wishing to fix their own software issues.
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