Microsoft blocks Windows 11 workaround that enabled local accounts
Microsoft blocks Windows 11 workaround that enabled local accounts
www.pcworld.com
Microsoft blocks Windows 11 workaround that enabled local accounts
173 comments
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I love how there is an entire group of people who think it’s perfectly normal to “fight” the company that makes the OS they use.
(This message brought to you by the Linux gang.)
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Yeah but on the other hand you also have to wrestle with Linux a lot, and personally usually a lot more time wise. It's all tradeoffs and what people care more about.
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If people didn't do this it would happen faster. Not everyone has the luxury of immediately switching, just like the "move to another state" argument
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Fuck Microsoft
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Wouldn’t it be possible to buy a new PC, open the box, and return it right after because you cannot set it up without internet?
If enough people do it, may be PC manufacturers will force Microsoft to add offline setups.
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Funny you say that, setting it up without internet is one of the few ways left to still be able to create a local account.
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If I understand correctly from the article, you have to enter ‘OOBE\BYPASSNRO’ in command prompt during installation to prevent it from asking to connect to internet. If that’s the only way to set up a local account, that’s hardly an accessible option.
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There's no clear path from getting the computer out of the box just setting it up without internet. If you call the manufacturer and they know what the hell they're doing they'll walk you through doing the OOBE no internet fix. It just needs to be an option in the damn operating system. The fact that they're hiding it from you is unconscionable.
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It was not an option one week ago when i tested it. Maybe because I was in WiFi range and Microsoft assumed you have to know the password to at least one of them to pass the wifi screen. No skip button. But could create a new account as unverified using gmail address.
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I’ve been debating for a while to switch windows to Linux and see how well it works for my games, thanks Microsoft for finally pushing me to do it!
Only thing keeping me on windows has been games (all other development use is far easier on Linux); but with the work that happened with Steam Deck, many games are now fully functional on Linux.
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Depending on what games you are playing, it should be a breeze. I ditched my windows installation last march and no regrets so far. Most of the games I enjoy run OOB in Linux, but some that I played occasionally are not supported, so I just live without them.
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Did the same. The writing has been on the wall for a long time, Microsoft's anti-user behavior is only set to get worse. I made the jump to Linux (Arch) and things have been reasonably smooth. I did have a few issues with Enshrouded, but was able to get past those with Proton-GE. The only issue I haven't worked around yet is Roblox with the kids. But, I may just have to pick up a cheap tablet for that.
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For me, working in IT, two things are keeping me on Windows:
- games
- IT tools only made for Windows.
Most remote access stuff is entirely Windows based. Sure, there's clients so you can connect to Linux, Mac, whatever, from the admin console, but the plugins and whatnot that actually show you the remote users desktop are almost entirely Windows exclusive. There's sometimes a Mac option, but almost never a Linux option.
Using something that's more common/public, like TeamViewer isn't really an option. There's a plethora of business focused RMM tools that are just web apps with Windows plugins for all the heavy lifting.
The part that gets me, is that any of these tools which allow for self hosting, can have the server and client side on Linux, but the IT team doing the work only gets Windows as an option for the remote control tools.
Infuriating.
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Most steam games just work. Make sure to go to settings and compatibility and let it use compatibility for all games. Look at something like bottles for a front-end to let you set up and use wine / proton for other launchers, etc….
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I use a combo of lutris and proton, if you're looking for keywords.
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I have yet to find even one game, from the stuff i play, that doesn’t work as well, or better. Obvious exceptions include games with a client anticheat though
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Was a bitch for me to get HOMM3 set up. But in the end I got it working. Would certainly be more plug n play on Windows, but I don't mind a little inconvenience if it means I'm not supporting from fuckass tech bro that wants my data.
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I just did it with Linux Mint. Works great. No issues so far. Just do it.
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Use shift f10 and edit the registry.... They aren't disabling that until they have a better solution for autopilot.
May not work for home editions...
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Tried that on the last install i had to do. Doesnt always anymore. Task manager was hidden by the setup a few times when i did that :(
I ended up using rufus to patch iso pre-extraction hehe :)
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That dude who predicted Windows 12 being a cloud OS was probably dead on the money.
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How would a cloud OS even work? Like what would your PC boot in to?
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Probably a minimal environment that streams the desktop to you. Must be the smallest windows install on a local PC ever.
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On a new install, before powering up, make sure you don't start it up with Ethernet plugged in, when you get to the Wi-Fi connection stage hit Ctrl+f10
Type in
oobe\bypassnro
And press enter. The computer will restart and now when you get to the Wi-Fi connection screen you'll have a like that says "I don't have internet".
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Shift+F10
oobe\bypassnro
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I’m assuming one would still be able to switch to a local account after installation, but you really shouldn’t need to. What a shit show.
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That would still require you to create an account, which is the part of the process people object to.
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OOBE\BYPASSNRO and fuck Microsoft
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That no longer works sadly
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Unless I missed something, the article states as follows
Another method of bypassing the account lockdown still exists. You simply have to enter OOBE\BYPASSNRO in the command prompt during the Windows 11 setup process, which allows you to skip the connection to the Internet and thus also the link to a Microsoft account.
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Just burn the ISO to a USB drive with Rufus, a window full of options with check boxes will pop up, with a lot of options to turn installation bullshit.
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Back in the day, using Windows was essentially a long series of fucking around with configurations and trying different workarounds to get things to "go". The actual using of the computer was, in a way, secondary.
Nothing has changed. Many many years ago I bought a used Apple to try it out and was just - astounded at how little I needed to mess with things to get them to do what I wanted. It was all in settings. That's it.
Watching Microsoft leap headfirst into full evil is just like watching the seasons change.
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So you've obviously never had to use
defaults write com.apple.stupidpreference.fix bool trueApple has a lot less nonsense than Microsoft, but the amount of nonsense is greater than zero. What's really annoying (on their mobile platform specifically) is when certain problems occur on iOS that would have been completely solvable on MacOS with a command line tool, but you have to erase the phone because Apple doesn't give you access to the OS.
MacOS is already deprecating the Keychain access tool, which will obfuscate more of the OS security from the user and make it more iOS-like in trying to fix failures.
Apple is enshittifying in absence of Jobs, they're just behind Microsoft by one or two decades.
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Mm hmm.
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The amount of time I've spent getting my MacOS to not be annoying... it's such a shit experience compared to Gnome/Linux. Every single day I use MacOS, I find a new annoying inconsistency, or either poor or directly bad UX design decision or implementation.
Next time I look for a place to work, I'd consider Windows or MacOS to require at least 30% higher salary to be worth the annoyance.
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And y'all say that linux users don't value their time... smh
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In them days Linux was even more about messing around with configurations and finding workarounds. It came on floppies, and as it loaded it made these kind of grinding, farting sounds. We would install it with an onion tied to our belt - which was the style at the time.
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Hahaha! I've been dabbling in live USB thumbdrive copies of various flavors of Linux to see which one I want to go to for a while. Did a few years back and thought, "you know, my time is worth something to me, maybe I'll give Windows a go, 10 seems pretty stable."
Booted up Debian Cinnamon, couldn't get two-finger right click to work on the Synaptics config out of box, it had a few arbitrary prefs for whatever the devs decided people would probably use. Tried Debian Gnome. It had trackpad settings that were more in line with what I expected... Not giving up, but it did make me pause, because I know one can reconfigure the trackpad driver under the hood, but did I really want to jump down the rabbit hole of bespoke shellscripts again just so my audio driver correctly wakes from sleep (if it can even successfully sleep)?
Other funny to figure out, the computer has iGPU and dGPU, both were active and the battery life was maybe 2 hours. Another thing to figure out with bespoke configurations.
So it's like, Windows and Linux (and lesser, MacOS) pain is definitely there, it is just kinda what kind of pain do you want to subscribe to? Linux pain will probably only occur during initial setup and maybe every few years when a major OS release comes out. MacOS pain is even more rare, unless a major OS release comes out with something you don't like and you have to find where in the OS frameworks the feature is to disable it, if they have hooks in which to do. Windows pain is....every Tuesday.
"Oh here's a new lock screen weather widget"
"Oh cool, I can get on board with that!"
Next week:
"Oh, here's a new stocks and news widget to go along with the weather."
"Hold on there buddy, I didn't sign up for the first and you've pushed two more? Time to shut those two off. Oh, it's all or nothing, thanks! Nothing it is."
"Don't worry, we'll reinstall Dev Home next week and flag it a system app so you can't uninstall it, and then we'll force Copilot to be present, and then we're going to screw with the start menu, and then we're going to delete WordPad, and reinstall all those Office/cloud 365 shim apps and and and." That was like, last month.
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Previously the fucking around was drivers, HAL, compatibility etc. now it's a goddamn delousing
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Hm. So are we all the way there to Win 11 not being installable in fully offline machines, or...? Because niche as that application is, it does sound like the start of a use case for a natively compatible Windows alternative from a third party (say, a FreeWin to go with FreeDOS). I know there are or have been some attempts, but... yeah, long term that seems like it would prompt more focus on something like that.
I suppose it's more likely that compatibility layers in other OSs would get there first and more practically, but still. Maybe it's time to move Windows applications from an ecosystem to a standard.
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The year of the ReactOS desktop?
On a serious note, I suspect the IOT version doesn't have this requirement.
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The IoT LTSC does not have this requirement. Or a USB made in Rufus can have it disabled.
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Linux with wine/proton already works pretty good for running Windows programs and games outside of Windows.
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I’m sure enterprise editions have to allow it in some capacity. There will always be businesses that will use Windows on machines not exposed to the Internet.
With that said, this is some BS. And MS I don’t want to hear the argument that smartphone vendors do it. They shouldn’t require an account either.
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FreeWin
ReactOS has been around for a while but still in development and not production ready
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Almost 30 years and still basically useless.
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.....aaaand I will never switch to Windows 11.
But then, I'm a hypocrite, because I have to create an account to use Android.
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Forced accounts are evil - including Android. Here's my Android story:
When I got my first Android phone, my intention was to not have an account - or at least have as much isolation between any account and my actual usage as possible. So I decline account creation when I first started using the phone, and told the phone to only store all contacts locally. That worked, and I was pretty happy with it. But later, I wanted to download a couple of basic apps from the app store - and that required an account. So I created a bogus account to download the apps. ...
After creating the account to download stuff, I noticed that the contacts had automatically associated themselves with that new account had automatically uploaded all my contacts and personal info to google to sync with this account. This is precisely the thing I was trying to avoid in the first place. So, I immediately logged into that account via google's website and told it to not store any contact info, and to delete all existing info. Which it did.
But then some time later... the account again decided to sync with my phone - this time to delete all the contacts from my phone (presumably because I'd deleted them from the online account). So although I'd gone to some deliberate lengths to tell my phone to only store data locally and to not upload it, what i ended up with was all personal data uploaded, and then purged from my phone. I had to try to restore my contacts from an ancient sim-card backup from my old phone.
Since then, I've decided that I will not use a google account for my phone for any reason, ever. I've use F-droid and the Aurora store instead. (But actually I very rarely use any apps anyway.)
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But why don't you just turn off the internet when setting up Windows? You don't need any hacks for that
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I believe that one was patched a while ago
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They did mostly. It is still possible (but can be extremely frustrating if your timing is off by fractions of a second) to disconnect a LAN cable or USB-LAN adapter (DON'T sign into a wifi network) at the right moment and cause it to ask for a name for the user account. I have taken to calling this the "AA Pullout Method." My co-workers and myself are crass de-gens and sometimes have to trade off trying to get it to work and made it a game to see who can get it to work in the least amount of tries. Get the "title" of "pullout king." Did you need to know this? No, but it is no less dumb than the steps below and attempts needed to just make a fucking local user on Windows 10/11 (though 10 seems to be much easier to get around).
You have to first fail at signing into a MS account. Which you can just type the letter "a" instead of an actual email address (seriously don't have to type anything else, not even adding "@email.whatever" is needed) as if you are just using a preexisting account and not pick the "create a MS account." It will then ask for your MS account password and just again type the letter "a." It will then give a "Oops something went wrong" message. This is where the unplugging the cable is needed. The timing is that you need to pull the cable basically right as you let go of your left-click on the "Retry" button. So like if you are using a regular mouse it won't register that you clicked the button until the moment you have lifted your finger. But if you fail to time it just right, it will either just cycle back to the "Sign into existing MS account" screen where you used the first "a" instead of an email. Or it will give a different message about not being online and take you back to the "Let's get you online" network screen with your LAN adapter and wifi networks. However if you time it correctly, it will just ask for the name of the user and password.
If you forget to plug the LAN cable back in after getting the "name of user" screen, it will give the screen about not being online. If you are able to get the local user name screen, just plug your LAN back in and it will just ask the rest of the setup questions like normal. And you now have a local user account. But again, shit is super touchy about the timing. So it could take quite a number of retries to get it to work. If you have ever used the PSP/PS3/PS Vita "Hen" non-permanent "custom firmwares," then you might know the struggle (as the hack may fail to launch until entirely too many attempts if you haven't used them).
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Never heard of it being patched so can't tell. Btw was the old one with administrator command prompt patched too?
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The W11 installer sadly doesn't allow that anymore with the current versions. If you have that older installer, keep it safely archived.
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A few months back I installed home edition and this workaround did not work. The installer would not allow me to proceed until it could verify with Microsoft.
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Just used this bypass 2 days ago. I'd recommend people download the current W11 installer so that the work around always works as long as you keep the device away from Internet until the OS is installed
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Win11 doesn't let you past setup if you dont have an internet connection.
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I believe it wasn't the case in the past. Well that sucks. I'm glad I don't use Windows for anything except gaming now
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Luckily m$ didn't block option to install Linux by permanently enable secure boot and lock bootloader right?
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Would something like that only apply to store-bought PCs? Or could they somehow lock a motherboard you bought separately? Sorry, no idea how bootloaders work, despite unlocking em plenty of times on Android phones in the past
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#RUNBSD it is then
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Lol that’s what I did after getting my new Windows laptop. Sad it’s blocked.
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I've heard you can use a cheap local RADIUS server to establish a local domain. Anyone attempt this?
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Having to do the meta-workaround of running another computer to make your computer usable is just...don't get me wrong, I love running infrastructure, but that seems like it should be unnecessary just to use a computer.
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You ain't wrong but I'd just run it on my NAS
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Not Radius,Samba. But yes. In theory the Samba server can even run on a VM on the same PC(but that makes it really messy). Raspi or similar is far easier.
Univention offers a ready made distro for that,but not for ARM, though.
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And like that, they just ensured I'm never moving on from 10.
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M$ be like, fine, we didn't want you anyway
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They say, until they start crying about "unsecured devices" that they assume all contribute to malware footprints despite all of the hold-outs I know having comprehensive A/V solutions lmfao
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Do people avoid Chromebooks for the same reason?
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You can still easily bypass it with other methods, like unplugging your ethernet cable. Even if you don't have an ethernet cable you can unplug, the WiFi screen has an "I don't have internet" button on Windows 11 Pro and above. Not sure about Home, but there are other alternative ways. It's still really shitty they keep trying to force this on people.
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i mean you don't need a workaround when they put this option right there when you click add account.
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The article is talking about the initial setup experience, where you could put in a fake email to bypass the requirement to sign in with a Microsoft account.
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173 comments
lack of local accounting means its no longer your operating system, youre now using a perpetually required service from microsoft.
the walled garden is putting the last bricks in place. hope all you windows fans are ...happy... asking
applemicrosoft for permission to use your own hardware."Our Computer"
This personnel computer
This is awfully deep. We live in a society.
<BOTTOM TEXT>
It's a real shame. I guess I'll be running Linux now.
I switched to Bazzite not long after the Recall AI announcement, shrinking my Windows partition to leave it for just VR stuff which currently doesn't work well outside of Windows, at least on my system. It's pretty great! Not perfect, but the problems I have on Bazzite are similar enough in quantity and degree to problems I had on Windows that I've basically switched out one set of weird OS quirks for another. The big difference is now I don't have to think about the OS being disrespectful corporate spyware.
Same here. I'll pirate the security updates for the next 3 years and then switch. Fuck Windows 11 and fuck Microsoft.
You can still block it easily with the command prompt (Shift+F10 during the install) as mentioned. But don't let that stop you from switching to Linux if you feel like it.
Wait, a proprietary OS is someone else's computer?
Apple doesn't actually make it at all difficult to use a Mac or iOS device without an Apple account. You're asked once during setup and that's it. At most there'll be a red dot in Settings>iCloud.
Apple doesn't require you to make an Apple ID to use a Mac lol
But apparently you DO need an Apple ID to access an Apple Notes file that was shared to your Android by your crazy ex who doesn't know that without an iPhone you won't be able to read their undoubtedly unhinged, rambling guilt trip. Thanks Apple!
Something tells me that could easily change.
its a xmas miracle
We would have that freedom with Android too if those stupid banking apps stopped trying to dictate what you can run on your hardware & Google giving them more features to do so.
This☝️person knows what we are talking about!
The Cask of Amontillado?