Windows 8 EOL and Windows 10 21h1 EOS, what do they mean for you?
Microsoft has announced that Windows 10 21h1 will go in End of Servicing (EOS) on December 13, 2022, and a month later, on January 10, 2023, they will put Windows 8 in End of Life (EOL)—Windows 8.1 End of Life will also occur on the same date. What does this mean for you as an MSP or internal IT team… should you care?
The short answer is “probably”.
Windows 8 End of Life
Many organizations still run Windows 8 for a number of different reasons, ranging from supporting legacy apps, and heavy budget restrictions, to apathy from management who see no business case for upgrading.
If you or your customer falls into one of these categories, Windows 8 EOL is not great news.
When Microsoft puts a product in End of Life, a few things happen. In the case of Windows 8, Microsoft 365 apps will no longer be supported on Windows 8 or 8.1 after their end of support dates for the latest supported versions. Potentially more importantly, however, Microsoft will stop providing security updates. This means that any new vulnerability found in Windows 8 or 8.1 will no longer be fixed/patched. While we have seen some exceptions to that rule with post EOL patches for Windows 7 over the years (with the extended security updates), you shouldn’t expect this to be the norm.
Furthermore, most major app developers will tend to stop supporting old operating systems within a few months of their EOL dates. This is not because they are mean or don’t care about you, but they are more than happy to support one less operating system version to save on QA time, among other things.
Finally, if you’re running an unsupported operating system it can become an issue with insurance providers and service providers, as it can be a source of additional risk. Unless under exceptional circumstances, a prerequisite of insurance and support cover is likely to be that all your covered devices are on a supported and maintained OS version.
So, unless you really, really, really need to keep using Windows 8 or 8.1 due to a business-critical legacy app that only works on this version of Windows, you need to be planning to update to Windows 10 or 11 before the critical January 10, 2023, date.
Windows 10 21h1 End of Servicing
Now let’s look at Windows 10 21h1 going EOS on December 13, 2022.
We don’t hear as much about EOS and it is very different to a Windows 10 21h1 end of life announcement, so a lot of people don’t fully understand what this means for them. Microsoft had announced that they would support up to two older major version of Windows 10 and 11 only, and we’re seeing the impact of this with this EOS announcement—to be fair it was announced well in advance.
When something enters EOS—or end of servicing—it means that Microsoft will no longer provide security updates for devices still on that platform, in this case Windows 10 21h1. This is important, as it means that any vulnerability found in Windows 10 21h1 will no longer be patched.
The upgrade path for Windows 10 21h1 is easier than Windows 8/8.1, but it shouldn’t be taken any less seriously. Now that Windows 10 21h1 will no longer be updated, it should be updated (at minimum) to the next version—Windows 10 21h2. According to Microsoft, Windows 10 21h2 will be maintained up to June 13, 2023.
What should you do next?
If you’re on Windows 8 or 8.1, or if your end users or customers are, you should really be finding them all, and pushing them to upgrade ASAP. The main reasons for this are: security, compliance, and liability. Don’t forget that a large percentage of computer attacks are preventable by a Windows update.
Microsoft has been offering upgrade paths to windows 10 and with a little bit of work to Windows 11, but realistically devices that are still running Windows 8/8.1 are very old, and probably should be replaced. If you cannot replace them, and if for some reason there are Windows 8/8.1 devices that you cannot get updated, our recommendation is to take them off the production/corporate networks, and virtualize them to try and reduce any potential risks.
If you’re on Windows 10 21h1, or again if your users or customers are, you should simply run a cycle of Windows updates and push all your “affected” devices to the latest update (and make sure you keep an eye on any future EOS dates). This can be done by using PowerShell scripts, Windows Update, WSUS, Intune, or your RMM tool of choice—whatever your preferred method is.
I’m not suggesting you necessarily push everything to the latest bleeding-edge build of Windows 10, but at a minimum you should always be on a supported version for the reasons outlined above. You should also be scheduling the update through your preferred method, as ignoring it may just put you in a situation where Microsoft forces updates of Windows 21h1 (as they did with Windows 20H2) at a less than convenient time. This could cause anything from mild annoyance that systems are rebooting during work hours to entire productivity suits ceasing to function.
Marc-Andre Tanguay is Head Nerd at N‑able. You can follow him on Twitter at @automation_nerd
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