> if so, why?

Have you tried installing Windows 11 without signing in to a Microsoft account? It's very difficult to do and the instructions online keep having to change as Microsoft makes it more and more difficult. What I'm finding now [0] involves using a hotkey to open command prompt at a certain part of the installation process and running a command to disable the internet before you proceed.

[0] https://www.tomshardware.com/how-to/install-windows-11-witho...

"Very difficult" is a bit of an exaggeration.

Don't connect to the internet, press 1 hotkey and enter 1 line of text ("OOBE\bypassnro").

While it's absolutely stupid that it needs to be done at all, it's not "very difficult".

I think most people understood that having step 1 be "know to look up the latest Microsoft account bypass instructions" makes a process very difficult.

If we want to be really pedantic, maybe I should have said "intentionally extremely obscure"—would that phrasing be satisfactory?

We just have really different ideas on what "very difficult" and "extremely obscure" are. Use whatever phrasing you want, no worries.

> Don't connect to the internet, press 1 hotkey and enter 1 line of text ("OOBE\bypassnro").

I've been a Linux user for decades through some dark days and some "hard" distros, and I would call that "very difficult". Part of the difficulty is knowing what you don't know, and that absolutely qualifies.

"windows 11 local account" in Google has this bypass in the first result. I Googled things when I setup various Linux distros as well, and I didn't consider that to be very difficult.

For a tech forum, I'm surprised at these responses. I have to Google shit all the time, including "can I do X in Y". I guess I'm the one out of touch, sorry.

> For a tech forum, I'm surprised at these responses. I have to Google shit all the time

I don't think anyone here is saying that they personally would have had difficulty installing Windows without a Microsoft account. I've done so myself.

What we're doing is empathizing with people who don't typically post on tech forums—people like my dad who install Windows on their own but don't regularly dig deep into the system internals. When I went through the process of installing Windows without setting up a Microsoft account I was appalled by how hard Microsoft is working to make sure that most people don't figure it out, and that was back in the days when all you had to do was not connect to Wi-Fi.

It's great that you'd be able to figure it out, but that's in spite of Microsoft's best efforts to hide the path.

That's a fair call out.

I'm generally either at work or just done work when I'm on HN so I'm in "work mode". The next time I'm called on for family tech support on a Sunday, I'll think back to this thread and be in a better position to empathize with a non-techie view.

I don't need to that on macos. Or Linux. Or whatever the fuck I want to use.

I don't need to disconnect from my network either. It just "work".

Did you miss this part of my comment?

>While it's absolutely stupid that it needs to be done at all

Then vote with your wallet and stop using this piece of shit of a software

I guess mine just came pre-installed without that. But my point still stands, just don't interact with the crap and you're still somewhat safer.

> just don't interact with the crap and you're still somewhat safer

You're not wrong, but your initial comment made it sound like it was just a matter of not stepping in a single pile of dog poo. What Microsoft presents users with instead is an entire sewer with a great big EXIT sign pointing straight through the sewage. If you're in the know you can mutter a secret incantation and a ladder will drop down, allowing you to climb up onto a rickety catwalk with lots of warning signs telling you that you're going the wrong way. If you're brave enough to ignore the warning signs then eventually you'll get to the other side without touching the crap.

Needless to say, most people follow the path that Microsoft designed for them and end up interacting with at least some of the crap.

Sure, but the typical person is not going to have a clue how to avoid interacting with the nonsense. At this point, there are two ways around it: do the installation as intended, then create a second local only account; or sift through the heaps of outdated advice online to bypass the registration requirement.

I thought the 'typical person' train has sailed a hundred years ago. You either take time to learn the fundamentals (in this instance, the fact that m$, crapple, etc. are all enemies) or you get exploited.

Notice that linux is not safe from that trend as well: you have to learn tech stuff to operate it in any capacity.

So there's no free lunch in this world, that much is obvious. I don't see where 'typical person' can reasonably survive intact in this tech climate so I also see no reason to bring them up.

You are definitely right but I still feel like this is Stockholm syndrome, if they keep dark-patterning people more and more into logging in, it doesn't really make this a substantial improvement, they'll update they're way into tracking you and uploading your personal files somehow.

They go out of their way to make this difficult. I tried disconnecting my internet while installing, but they're apparently wise to that because the option which internet articles claim is there is no longer there. I think there's probably a console dropdown you can bring up when installing to get a local account, but I've decided against fighting the OS. It's so user hostile that it's not worth it to try to turn it into something I like.

Luckly I've been installing into a VM, so I can delete the network interface entirely. That seems to get it.

But yeah, I only use it for some horrible hardware that absolutely will not run on WINE and has proprietary drivers. The day my wife gives up crafts, will be a day of celebration.

I literally did an install of Win 11 this week - trying to stay offline didn't work, trying to enter false details didn't work, couldn't find any other tricks and so had to make yet another account.

Got it installed, added the family as users, tried to login to my young child's freshly minted account. Apart from taking forever, you then have to go through all the "let us copy all your data" and "we're going to advertise to you, so you may as well let us personalise the ads!" and so on ... and you have to do that for every member of the family ... it's an absolutely diabolical time suck.

And of course you can't, for goodness knows what reason, just point at the existing Win10 install to copy all the profiles and settings across.

It all sucks.

From what I see the only working method for creating an offline account is during the windows setup when you press shift + F10 which will spawn a command line window where you have to enter "oobe\bypassnro" which will reboot the computer and on the wifi selection screen will give you a "I don't have an internet connection" button

Won't work though if you're Already configured for wifi

I love all the magic tricks and fake doors you use to bypass this evil shit.

I screwed up and connected to wifi before using the oobe\bypassnro command.

I had to block the PC from accessing the Internet in my router settings to get the "I don't have an internet connection" button back.

If buy a PC with windows 11 pro instead of home, you can also just click other options and choose "Domain join instead." you don't actually have to enter any domain info, etc it'll just have you create a local account.

Won't really help "regular" people since most off-the-shelf, i.e. Best Buy, computers come with Home but if you stick to business lines (ThinkPads, XPS, Latitude, Precision, EliteBook and ProBooks, etc.) you get Pro edition.

Home PCs? Clone the drive and restore it in the other computers.

At this point I'm not sure why to upgrade to Windows 11? Win10 EOL is 10.2025. And then you can upgrade to Windows 12, which should be good because it's even (98 shit xp good vista shit 7 good 8 shit 10 good 11 shit...)

Yeah, demand from family members...

Well done to MS marketing I suppose.