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Comment by salawat | Hacker News Reader

Also, in the latest versions of the windows 11 install or OEM first boot setups, the only way you can get the local account option is to kill every network connection. The local account option is hidden otherwise.

My ritual for family machine setup is locate wifi kill switch-> if not available, announce wireless going down-> kill network->setup to local account->reenable network

It's patently infuriating. Throw in where I've had family members set up Microsoft accounts with only 1 form of auth (Phone number), change that, them get locked out of their Microsft account for a month because of Microsoft's daft policies. Though I didn't set up that machine. It boggles the mind that Microsoft's default flow would run the risk of such an outcome.

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Alternatively you can enter no@thankyou.com as the username and a random password, which causes the login to fail, allowing local account setup [1].

[1]: https://www.thurrott.com/windows/windows-11/269419/tip-set-u...

...That is horrifying.

No we won't just add a "No thanks" button, but we'll set up an undocumented magic username to serve the same purpose?

And to make it even more nightmarish, where is that check? Is it extractable from the installer binary? Or is it some weird exception case implemented in server code only viewable by microsoft?

For that matter, who owns thankyou.com? Is there some unfortunate sod with no@thankyou.com as an email address?

There is so much wrong with this. I can't even...

You're thinking this through much more than Microsoft ever did. The OP was only saying to pretend that you can't log into an existing account.

That doesn't fix the issue. They are going dark patterm, which is the bloody issue.

There is nothing about that setup that isn't an exercise in plausibly deniable forced on-ramping. No it isn't a best practice to create the illusion you can't use an operating system without agreeing to a cloud services contract.

That's BS, and should be called out as such. UX is trying to gaslight the non-technical into services they don't need, and I'm willing to go out on a limb that everyone in the market is trying to converge on that exact practice.

>in the latest versions of the windows 11 install or OEM first boot setups, the only way you can get the local account option is to kill every network connection.

And when you did, the next step required you to first select "I don't have internet" then next be shown some embarassing pseudo-technical propaganda appealing to your FOMO, to provide one full page of discouragement before you agree to "continue with limited setup" if you want to actually have a full regular local account. And that illusion is maintained further into the user experience, where status will sometimes be reported as "setup incomplete".

With the Sept 2022 release of W11 you can't even do that any more.

When you reach this point and there is no longer the option to admit your poor soul has no internet, the incantation here is to hit Shift+F10 which opens a command prompt. Click in the CMD window to make it respond to your keyboard then oobe\bypassnro. Reboots and reverts to previous "I don't have internet" option.

Sheesh.

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