Microsoft has removed the “use offline account” option when installing Windows

Re:Microsoft has removed the “use offline account” option wh... by oefrha on Sunday September 29, 2019 @12:56AM (#21105174)

Yep, and last I checked (earlier this year I believe), there’s still a 14-character length limit on the MS account password. My bank’s better than that for crying out loud. Forget diceware or any other sane scheme, say hello to random hard-to-type punctuation characters.

And now you’re forced to use that as your computer password too, which you probably have to type multiple times a day.

(Okay, thankfully local account is still possible.)

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Re:Microsoft has removed the “use offline account” option wh... by a254613e on Sunday September 29, 2019 @02:20AM (#21105446)

Are you talking about online microsoft account or something windows specific? Because that's not true, my password has been 40+ characters for a long time and I change it pretty often.

For local login you can use a PIN, or set up windows hello, if you don't want to type in the long password every time.

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Re:Microsoft has removed the “use offline account” option wh... by oefrha on Sunday September 29, 2019 @03:40AM (#21105710)

> Are you talking about online microsoft account or something windows specific?

I'm talking about the Microsoft online account, and I stand by my statement that I was limited to 14 characters until relatively recently (maybe not earlier-this-year recent, that part I'm not sure). Looking at my Microsoft password history, I've changed it five times since 2012 (when I started using a password manager), each one is 14 characters long; the last change was done in 2016. I've been using 32+ character passwords wherever possible since 2012, so the only reason I was using 14 characters for Microsoft was because of the artificial limit imposed on me. And I did check a few times after 2016 to confirm the limit.

Anyway, I just tried to change the password again and this time I was warned that my Microsoft and Skype accounts would be merged if I carried through with the password change, so something did change after I last checked.

> For local login you can use a PIN, or set up windows hello, if you don't want to type in the long password every time.

I'm aware, but I don't consider a PIN secure, and I don't think Windows Hello is an option for most desktop workstations.

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Re:Microsoft has removed the “use offline account” option wh... by WorldMaker on Monday September 30, 2019 @05:11PM (#21119695)

I've got more than a passing suspicion the 16 character limitation for Microsoft Accounts was a compatibility need with Windows XP, because the restriction was fixed almost exactly as soon as Windows XP finally hit EOL.

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Re:Microsoft has removed the “use offline account” option wh... by Santosh83 on Sunday September 29, 2019 @01:51AM (#21105362)

This isn't the case with me. My MS a/c (which is also my Windows login a/c) has a 44 character password.

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Re:Microsoft has removed the “use offline account” option wh... by will4274 on Sunday September 29, 2019 @08:30AM (#21106648)

> last I checked (earlier this year I believe), there’s still a 14-character length limit on the MS account password

It was 16 chars. And it hasn't been true since 2016.

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Re:Microsoft has removed the “use offline account” option wh... by wbkang on Sunday September 29, 2019 @03:06PM (#21109006)

As many people said already you can use longer passwords.

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