What are users doing to help non technical people when windows 10 is end of life?

Privacy Questions
21

Yes, and windows 10 LTSC is still supported with security updates.

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22

I was not able to switch from Windows 11 pro to iot as it would revert to pro. However, on a different system that has an oem key built into the motherboard, i was able to switch to iot and then restart, then activate without issue.

23

Idk tbh I was able to get windows 10 pro to Windows 11 iot ltsc
Did you try the registry hack of fooling windows into thinking itā€™s already on windows 11 iot ltsc theb moving there or something?

24

Never heard of this

25

Upgrade Windows 10 Home, Pro, etc editions to Windows 11 IoT Enterprise (GAC/LTSC) 2024 while keeping files and apps

Download the required ISO from the above link in the same Windows language and architecture.
The IoT edition is available in English language only, but donā€™t worry. If you want it in another language, download any Windows 11 24H2 (For GAC) or Enterprise LTSC 2024 (For LTSC) ISO in your language. (ISO in the same language is important)
To check the installed Windows architecture, open Powershell as admin and enter,
Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_OperatingSystem | Format-List OSArchitecture
x64 means 64 Bit, x86 means 32 Bit
To check the installed Windows Language, open Powershell as admin and enter,
dism /english /online /get-intl | find /i ā€œDefault system UI languageā€
Right-click on the downloaded ISO file, Open With > Windows Explorer
A new DVD drive will appear in Windows Explorer, which means the installation image has been mounted successfully.
Now open the command prompt as admin and enter,
For GAC
reg add ā€œHKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersionā€ /v EditionID /d IoTEnterprise /f
**For LTSC
reg add ā€œHKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersionā€ /v EditionID /d IoTEnterpriseS /f
Now quickly go into that DVD drive and run setup.exe, and continue until you reach the final confirmation screen. (Donā€™t take time at this step, otherwise it wonā€™t show an option to keep files and apps)
Make sure it says ā€œKeep personal files and appsā€ on the final screen. Then you can continue the process and wait until it is done.
Thatā€™s all.

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26

Yeah, non technical people are either gonna have to buy a new computer or they will have to become technical. Probably the first thing in most cases.

Wanting to use a 15 year old computer is like wanting to drive a 50 year old car. Yeah, people do that all the time, but they certainly had to put effort or money into keeping that thing running.

Nothing against non-technical people, but I donā€™t think they should be surprised when the cost of being one ends up being financial in nature.

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27

The only time Iā€™ve succeeded in doing this is:

  1. There was a dire need for a computer, but the computer was unable to even use Chrome the way they wanted due to being so old (an old Mac), and they had not budget for a new one
  2. Only use case was Google Docs on Chrome, so nothing fancy
  3. I installed Linux Mint, choosing a random distro I felt met their use case

They barely noticed the difference, and thought it was a slick Mac install before I told them it was Linux.

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28

I migrated three of my elderly neighbors off their infected windows 10 laptops to Pop OS. If 80- and 90-year old people can figure out PopOS and Cosmic, then Iā€™m guessing most people can do so without much effort. 90% of what they do is in a browser anyway. Getting them off google/msft/fb/etc is a different challenge.

In all 3 cases, I backed up the data, wiped, installed PopOS, restored their data. One of the women is convinced I swapped her hardware because it was so infected with cryptominers under Win10 it was very slow. The same laptop with PopOS is very responsive (i5-6th or 7th gen) with even just 16 GB of ram.

Do I scale? No. However, the sample size of 3 shows itā€™s possible for normal users to switch. One of the neighbors did their own switch, with me watching. This is a 4th convert.

Their alternative was to buy a new macbook and let the apple store staff help them with migration from windows to apple.

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29

Itā€™s possible (but quite rare) for a virtual edition switch to fail/undo itself due to corrupt WPA keys, if youā€™ve tried all the normal troubleshooting try Fix WPA Registry | Gravesoft
you can also try In-place Repair Upgrade | Gravesoft

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