Microsoft breaks the Windows 10 to 11 upgrade tool mere days before the support deadline

At the time of writing, we are just two days away from Windows 10 falling out of support. After October 14th, people who want to stay within Microsoft’s ecosystem will either need to continue their Windows 10 support using the extended support plan or upgrade to Windows 11. However, doing the latter may be a little trickier than we’d like.

It turns out, people may have a problem with using the Windows 11 media creation tool to upgrade to Windows 10. Which is pretty bad, given how people are likely going to try to jump ship when Windows 10’s support ends. Fortunately, Microsoft has published a fix that people can use instead.

In a post on the Microsoft Learn page, the company explains what’s going wrong. Turns out, an update that was released in late September is causing havoc:

The Windows 11 media creation tool version 26100.6584, released September 29, 2025, might not work as expected when used on Windows 10 devices. The media creation tool might close unexpectedly, displaying no error message.

The media creation tool is used to create a bootable USB or DVD which can be utilized to perform a reinstall or clean install of Windows 11 on a new or used PC. Note that the Windows 11 media creation tool is not currently supported on Windows 10 devices that use Arm64 processors.

So, how bad is it? Well, Windows Latest took the initiative and tried out the media creation tool, and sure enough, it’s really not working for them. They tried their hardest to get it to work, but no dice:

We were able to download the Media Creation Tool from the Windows 11 ISO page. While clicking on the executable file, a prompt asks to allow the application to make changes to Windows. Upon pressing the Yes button, a Windows logo shows up, but the application abruptly closes, failing to install.

All our attempts to use the Media Creation Tool on Windows 10 failed abruptly.

Fortunately, while Microsoft works on fixing this issue, it states that there’s another way to upgrade your Windows 10 machine. Head over to the Windows 11 Installation Assistant page and scroll down to “Download Windows 11 Disk Image (ISO) for x64 devices.” Follow the instructions provided there.

Also, if you want, you can still upgrade via Windows Update. If your PC supports Windows 11, your Windows Update page should be gently nudging you to update to the newer Windows OS. As far as we can tell, that method still works fine.

Hopefully, this should let you upgrade without any issues. Or, you know, you can always swap to another operating system entirely.