Windows 10 ESU Change

[River Valley Computer]

Just released. Now Microsoft is requiring the user to sign into their Microsoft Account every 60 day for the ESU to stay in affect. Probably more to come.

 

[britechguy]

Source? I want to see this from "the horse's mouth."

 

[britechguy]

Just found one: https://www.microsoft.com/en-ie/windows/extended-security-updates?r=1

And you are correct that a login to the Microsoft Account must occur at least once every 60 days on any device enrolled in the Windows 10 ESU. But it's still not required that you use a Microsoft Account linked Windows user account.

If someone can't remember to do that I'd just sign in OneDrive free and turn off any syncing or just sync Desktop, which is almost invariably well below the 5GB limit.

 

[fincoder]

Just found one

Thanks @britechguy . Interesting that "60 days" is mentioned for "Consumers in the European Economic Area". The site is Microsoft Ireland (en-ie). I thought I read that the EU can enrol in EU without a MS acct.

No mention of "60 days" on the en-au or en-us versions of that page.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/extended-security-updates

At face value, it reads like outside the EU we have less onerous conditions. I put that down to unclear language though. The 60 days presumably applies to all regions.

 

[britechguy]

At face value, it reads like outside the EU we have less onerous conditions. I put that down to unclear language though. The 60 days presumably applies to all regions.

Which may be true, but I'm going to err on the side of caution. I'll do what I mentioned earlier, and that's set up free OneDrive to sync only desktop. That will fulfill the requirement (where it exists) that a login to the Microsoft Account used to enroll is occurring from the machine more regularly than once every 60 days.

I've often said, in regard to other things, "under the rules/laws in force in your jurisdiction." You are correct that this may vary by location, but following "the most restrictive" requirements makes the most sense in this case.

I'll still bet that we have the hanger's on next October. It will be just like this bit, posted in the Humor Section by @GTP, indicates, but again next year at end of the ESU program:

It's nothing short of insanity-making, at least for me. In the immortal lyrics of The Bangles: When it's over, when it's done, let it go!

 

[sapphirescales]

I'd just sign in OneDrive free and turn off any syncing or just sync Desktop, which is almost invariably well below the 5GB limit.

That's not been my experience. A good chunk of my clients just dump everything on the desktop, and they only use the Downloads folder because that's where Chrome automatically stores downloads to. Oh well. That's better than what most of my clients did in the DOS/3x/9x days, which is dump everything straight into the C drive. You can thank Windows XP for creating standardized user folders. Or did that exist in ME/2000 too? I don't remember. I avoided ME like the plague and most of my customers didn't have 2000. They went straight from 98 to XP.

 

[Sky-Knight]

@sapphirescales The standard folders existed in both Windows NT and Windows 9x, they moved into a unified directory structure with Windows 2000. I think it was XP that started defaulting save dialogs to use these folders, and provided nice easy shortcuts to get to them in the UI.

But mostly we've gone from
%windir%\profiles

to

C:\Documents and Settings\

to

C:\Users

The structure under the hood changed a few times too, but we've had these standard profile folders for ages, almost since the beginning.

But back in the 9x days, c:\documents was still a thing, because for some reason putting documents into the user's profile took awhile. Probably had something to do with 3.11 and 9x being single user.

 

[britechguy]

A good chunk of my clients just dump everything on the desktop

Again, our experiences are very, very different. I've never had any client, business or residential, actually store much of anything other than shortcuts on the desktop. Many will create shortcuts to actual storage folders elsewhere, but not actually place long-term storage folders directly on/under the desktop folder.

Most of the desktop shortcuts are to programs, in my experience. There might be a file or two on the desktop, but that's about it. The Documents library is the "big dumping ground," or at least it is for those who don't treat the Downloads folder as though it's intended for long term storage.

 

[timeshifter]

I think the title of this thread be "Windows 10 ESU Change", unless there's something about Windows 11 that's involved?

 

[Sky-Knight]

I think the title of this thread be "Windows 10 ESU Change", unless there's something about Windows 11 that's involved?

Bot now we can't thread necro this thing when Windows 12 shows up!

 

[Philippe]

Interesting that "60 days" is mentioned for "Consumers in the European Economic Area".

Here in the EU, MS has announced that a pop-up will allow user to enroll in ESU by signing-up with their Microsoft account, and that the PC should not be deconnected from the MS account more than 60 days.

 

[Sky-Knight]

Here in the EU, MS has announced that a pop-up will allow user to enroll in ESU by signing-up with their Microsoft account, and that the PC should not be deconnected from the MS account more than 60 days.

I think that has something to do with the EU's "right to be forgotten", it sounds like MS has had to implement a user based control for the ESU instead of a device based control as a result. (You'll never get out of the Activation database)

That would require a regular license check, which Windows does on login if and only if the login is Entra ID managed... which the Microsoft Accounts are, you're basically joining your machine to Microsoft's global directory, there's no management, only the identity is cloud centric. But it does mean that you can get software licensing delivered via that avenue, which gives the user more control over specific things... such as... right to be forgotten. You can always delete your Microsoft account, but none of us get to have our hardware IDs removed from that monstrous activation database for Windows 10.

 

[fincoder]

Here in the EU, MS has announced that a pop-up will allow user to enroll in ESU by signing-up with their Microsoft account

But that's all that is required here in Australia (and I believe the US). No difference there.

and that the PC should not be deconnected from the MS account more than 60 days.

That's not mentioned in Aus and US, that's why I found the Microsoft Ireland page interesting. I thought EU customers did not require syncing settings to a MS account for free enrolment. Maybe the OS doesn't sync settings to the account for EU customers.

Time will tell if the 60 days is also relevant here in Aus and also in the US.