Windows 11 version 24H2 Home and Pro stops receiving security updates on 13 October 2026, which is 14 October in most of Australia. Machines that have not moved to 25H2 or later lose patching that day, the same day Windows 10's first year of Extended Security Updates ends. A thirty-second winver check tells you where each PC stands.
Almost all of the attention this year has gone to Windows 10, and fairly enough: it is the bigger population. But Microsoft's lifecycle page for Windows 11 Home and Pro carries a second deadline on the same calendar page, and because the machines involved are already running Windows 11, nobody thinks of them as at risk. They are, if they are stuck on the wrong version.
When does Windows 11 24H2 stop getting security updates?
Microsoft's lifecycle page for Windows 11 Home and Pro lists version 24H2 with an end date of 13 October 2026. Home and Pro releases get 24 months of servicing; 24H2 became generally available on 1 October 2024, and its 24 months run out this October. After that date, a Home or Pro machine still on 24H2 receives no further security updates, no quality fixes and no monthly patches of any kind. It keeps working; it just stops being defended.
The versions that remain in servicing are 25H2, which Microsoft lists with an end date of 12 October 2027, and 26H1, released in February 2026 and serviced into March 2028. Any Home or Pro machine on 25H2 or later has at least another year of patches ahead of it. This article's dates were checked against the Microsoft lifecycle pages in July 2026.
Why is 14 October 2026 a double cliff for Australian businesses?
Two unrelated support clocks run out on the same Pacific date. Windows 10's first year of commercial Extended Security Updates ends on 13 October 2026, and businesses staying on Windows 10 must buy ESU Year 2 to remain patched. Windows 11 24H2 Home and Pro ends servicing the very same day. A small business that spent 2026 worrying about its last few Windows 10 machines can sail past the date feeling finished, while three Windows 11 laptops in the corner quietly stopped receiving patches at the same moment.
The Windows 11 side of the cliff is arguably the more dangerous one, because it is invisible. Windows 10 machines have been nagging their owners for a year. A Windows 11 24H2 machine looks current, reports itself as Windows 11, and gives no obvious sign that its particular version has left support.
What does end of servicing mean, and is it different from end of support?
Microsoft uses end of support for a whole product reaching the end of its life, the way Windows 10 did on 14 October 2025. End of servicing applies to one version of a product that continues on. Windows 11 itself remains fully supported under Microsoft's Modern Lifecycle Policy; what expires on 13 October 2026 is the 24H2 release specifically. The remedy is not a new licence or new hardware, it is a free feature update to a serviced version.
That distinction is why this deadline gets so little airtime. There is no product dying, no ESU program to buy and no press cycle. The consequence for an individual machine is identical, though: after its version's end date, security vulnerabilities found in Windows are patched for 25H2 and 26H1 but not for it.
How do unmanaged machines end up stuck on 24H2?
On paper, the problem solves itself: Windows Update offers 25H2 automatically as a machine approaches end of servicing. In practice, feature updates fail or stall far more often than monthly patches do, and on an unmanaged fleet nobody is looking at the failure. The common causes are mundane:
- Not enough free disk space. Feature updates want tens of gigabytes of headroom, and budget machines with 128 GB drives routinely run too full for the update to stage.
- Safeguard holds. When Microsoft detects a driver or application known to break on the new version, it silently withholds the offer from that machine until the incompatibility is resolved.
- Deferred or paused updates. A pause someone set during a busy week, or a leftover group policy or registry setting pinning the machine to a target release, keeps the offer away indefinitely.
- Silent failures. The update downloads, attempts to install, hits an error, rolls back and reschedules itself. The user sees a slow reboot and nothing else. Some machines loop like this for months.
- Machines that are rarely on, rarely rebooted or on metered connections, which never sit still long enough to complete a multi-gigabyte staged update.
None of these announce themselves. That is the defining feature of the problem: a fleet of ten unmanaged PCs can contain two or three in one of these states, and absolutely nothing on screen distinguishes them from the machines that updated cleanly.
How do you check your Windows 11 version in 30 seconds?
- 1Press the Windows key and R together.
- 2Type winver and press Enter.
- 3Read the second line of the box that appears. It will say Version 25H2, Version 24H2 or something older.
Version 25H2 or 26H1 means the machine is fine into late 2027 or beyond. Version 24H2 means the October deadline applies to that machine. Anything older on a Home or Pro edition is already out of servicing and should be treated as unpatched today. The same information is available under Settings, System, About, and Settings, Windows Update will usually show why a machine has not taken 25H2 if you dig, but winver is the fastest honest answer.
For machines on 24H2 with nothing blocking them, the move to 25H2 is a small enablement update rather than a full reinstall, since the two versions share a servicing branch. It is one of the least disruptive feature updates Microsoft has shipped, which makes being caught by this deadline especially avoidable.
Do Enterprise and Education editions face the same October deadline?
No, and the contrast is worth understanding. Enterprise and Education editions get 36 months of servicing per release instead of 24. On Microsoft's lifecycle page for Windows 11 Enterprise and Education, version 24H2 runs to 12 October 2027, a full year longer than the same version on Home and Pro. The Enterprise deadline this cycle is different: version 23H2 Enterprise and Education ends servicing on 10 November 2026.
One footnote from the same lifecycle page: 24H2 was the final supported version for the Windows 11 SE education edition. SE devices have no 25H2 to move to, so 13 October 2026 is a hard stop for them, and schools still carrying SE hardware should plan replacements rather than updates.
Why don't Intune-managed fleets have this problem?
Because on a managed fleet, version drift is a report, not a mystery. Microsoft Intune feature update policies declare the version every device should be on, and Windows Update for Business reporting then shows, per device, whether it got there, and if not, why: a named safeguard hold, insufficient disk space, a stalled download, a machine that has not checked in. The stuck three per cent stop being invisible and become a work list. Disk can be cleared remotely, offending drivers updated, holds tracked to resolution, and the handful of genuinely difficult machines identified months before a deadline instead of after it.
This is the unglamorous core of what a managed service provider actually does. Frontrow runs its clients' fleets on Intune with exactly these policies and reports in place, which is why an end-of-servicing date is a routine calendar entry for a managed fleet and a genuine risk for an unmanaged one. The machines are not different; the visibility is.
What should a business do before October?
- 1Run winver on every Windows 11 machine, or ask your IT provider for a version report across the fleet. This takes minutes and removes all guesswork.
- 2For every machine showing 24H2, check free disk space and look in Windows Update for a pending or failed 25H2 offer.
- 3Install 25H2 on the machines that will take it, and investigate the ones that refuse: safeguard hold, disk, or a leftover deferral setting are the usual suspects.
- 4Fold the check into the same October plan as any remaining Windows 10 ESU decisions, since both clocks stop on the same Australian date of 14 October.
- 5If nobody in the business can produce that version report on request, treat that as the actual finding and get the fleet under management before the next deadline, not after this one.