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Comment by gadders | Hacker News Reader

I installed Teams on my personal PC last week, and as part of the install Microsoft managed to change my whole windows install to use my Microsoft account to login, rather than my local account. It took me a while to work out what had happened and unfuck it all.

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Microsoft accounts are the biggest clusterfuck they've produced in recent history. I hate them with a passion, and they keep pushing them no matter how much you keep rejecting them. You need to jump through lots of hoops to simply get a local account in Win 10, and then they keep harassing you about upgrading.

When my son was ready for his own laptop, I originally set it up with a Microsoft Family account. That was a terrible mistake. Microsoft Family causes only pain and misery and completely fails at what it's supposed to do.

Microsoft bought Minecraft and recently forced everybody to migrate from perfectly functional Mojang accounts to Microsoft accounts, which makes everything more complicated. My son's Minecraft account ended up on my wife's Microsoft account, and suddenly I'm called UnshavenFiber (though not entirely incorrectly, I've got to admit).

To clarify mcv's last statement... if you have taken the time to create local user accounts because who is using your computer is none of Microsoft's business, and then you make the mistake of buying Minecraft and logging in to it, Minecraft will automatically and with no warning [1] irrevocably tie that Windows user account to the Microsoft account used to log in Minecraft.

I now have n+1 accounts on my Windows system because I had the kid who did that leave that account just to use Minecraft and created a new account for everything else.

I'm pretty close to going to Linux on this system. It was the house game system but I just got a Steam Deck, which is fulfilling that role nicely, and that leaves Windows hanging on only by a thread of my personal laziness/business (depending on how charitable you are); everything else that system does is either equally doable by Linux or better done by Linux.

[1] At least, no warning I saw and/or understood, and I think it's fair to say that if I didn't realize that's what going to happen, neither did 99%+ of the user base. I'm sure lawyers have their bases covered somewhere but I don't care.

> I'm pretty close to going to Linux on this system

Well, I'm one step ahead of you. As of last weekend, I purchased and returned 3 games due to unplayability on Windows 10 (yes, patched, all drivers updated, msconfig nothing running, ran exclusive/un-bordered/windowed, every recommended change and sfc checks ok), and they all crashed regularly at irregular intervals.

I've partitioned the SSD and have installed Ubuntu. Now to learn how to use Proton to make games work.

That was my last Windows machine. Goodbye Microsoft.

edit: Just to add...I'm the most technical of my group of friends and typically lead the way. If this works, I'll have 5 other guys migrating in the next 12 months with me, they too have been complaining since leaving Windows 7.

If you're set on going with Proton I can recommend 3 resources: ProtonDB, GloriousEggroll's custom Proton, and of course good old GamingOnLinux.

Also Microsoft stores the escrow keys for disk encryption and login on their servers when you use a Microsoft Account, and will happily hand it to the government on request.

I can't express how much the MS account thing totally ruined me from ever using or buying MS products again. Trying to make a PC have an account for my kids to play MS flight simulator was pure insanity. Never again MS.

"If the older people won't change to our accounts, we'll capture the next generation." The minecraft acquisition was a great business move for them.

Oh the pains of Minecraft administration! I could write a book about cross platform incompatibility, Microsoft account dysfunction, billing issues, and upgrade blocking execution. We’ve spent $100s and it does nothing but get worse.

I tried setting up Minecraft the first time on my kids ipads and the whole Xbox/Live account thing literally made me angry. I am technically competent and I couldn't figure that shit out for hours.

During the Windows 10 install they make it look like you needed to login with your MS account. They option to use a normal local login is right there but it’s named in some funny way so you don’t think that it’s the normal login. At first I thought this was just for the main admin account and let it slide, because I was only intending to use Windows for games (it’s not good for anything else). But when you want to create a second account, it tries to trick you into creating a new MS account.

What a flaming POS.

With Windows 11 there's no UI option to use local account at all. You need to press magic combination, launch cmd, execute some bat-file with unpronounceable name and reboot. Then this option appears.

I mean, it's one Google search away, so not a big deal, but they do push hard for MS account.

I recently had to install Windows 11 and did so by downloading an ISO and flashing it to a USB. To my surprise the latest version of Rufus (https://rufus.ie/en/) can detect if you are using the official Windows 11 ISO and let you skip the initial setup and create a Windows 11 local account. You can also disable the TPM and processor requirements IIRC. IDK how it even does this, I guess it modifies some boot menu when writing the image.

Win 11 still sucks but this makes it much much better.

The process is available (though you also need to click away a few nudges to get you onto cloud) using the normal setup if you use Pro instead of Home, with Home they basically force it on you, allegedly so they get to backup your BitLocker recovery keys.

I think in general Microsoft is suffering from an incentive problem. Unlike Apple they don't really have any revenue stream from users except for the up-front cost of the installation but still incur costs for patching etc. so they do all this trickery to at least get access to data and metrics to improve their paid line of products (Office etc.)

> allegedly so they get to backup your BitLocker recovery keys

AKA so you can't really encrypt your own computer without someone else also be able to unlock said encryption "if they really have to".

Idk what happens on the backend, so I wont engage in conjecture on how safe it is, but keep in mind that BitLocker is not available for Home users at all in Win10 and enabling it by default in Win11 does increase the data safety of the average user quite a bit because a petty thief will not be able to get any data from the device.

Thanks, was not aware about edition difference. I'm surprised that MS put that bat-file in their install files, because it definitely looks like it was specially created for that purpose (it sets one key in registry and then reboots computer which starts installation again, but now this registry key enables UI option to use local account).

I believe this is about to change in 22H2 Pro. You will need internet and microsoft account to set up. And a Pro license is a $1000 markup on consumer laptops, from what I've seen.

Telemetry/metrics and device-account relation is not just for revenue or improving the paid products; it helps immensely in tracking down and debugging Windows and external device drivers as well.

On 11, just click the 'login with Microsoft Account' and for email use no@thankyou.com and when you click Next it'll automatically dump you to the local setup flow.

I recently ran into this setting up a laptop for work and how user hostile this step had become made my blood boil. There is no option to setup an initial local account unless you intentionally provide bad input to the Microsoft login page, I ended up just wiping the machine and installing Windows 10 from scratch

I'd really like to able to send invoices to Microsoft and other companies like Dell who pull this bullshit for wasting time in my life to work around this stuff (and I wonder how much potential productivity is used up by these practices)

To run Android apps on Windows 11 you need a Microsoft account AND an Amazon account. The Windows Subsystem for Android comes with the Amazon Appstore app which is only available through the Microsoft Store.

The last time I installed Windows on a computer, back in late 2020, that option would also be hidden if you were connected to the internet. Since the wifi configuration occurs first, ostentiably to start downloading updates while going through the setup, this was usually the case. The only way to get the local option back was to entirely shut down the machine, then start the process over.

What about Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC ? I recently installed it in a Qubes to be able to run some specific database software until I can export the data to an open, libre database. My understanding was that LTSC didn't require an account or even an activation code, but I've been able to run a trial iso I downloaded directly from Microsoft.

In my experience, shutting down and rebooting wasn't enough; Windows 10 still forced me to create a Microsoft account. I had to open a cmd on the installer screen and remove my home Wi-Fi network from the known network list, then possibly reboot.

Exactly so.

I have to unplug lab cables when flashing a machine or I don’t get a choice.

"Look, MS account signups grew!"

For me, because I know this is subjective, fucking with Linux to make it work how I want is less of a hassle now than fucking with Windows to make it work how I want (again).

I say to people that Linux is now the most usable of the big three. And not because it's improved.

heh, sad but true (maybe, I'm not familiar with MacOS).

Windows 7 was actually an amazing OS, everything since then has been hot garbage. I have no experience with Windows 11, but that's on purpose.

Reinstalling graphics drivers from a real TTY when the occasional update hoses them is far and away more preferable than, say, ads in the start bar (for me).

... or installing fucking candy crush by default (which, really, is just a long form ad).

But maybe that's my inner (outer, now?) old man talking? I mean, Minesweeper, patience and a couple of others, maybe even a pinball game always came with Windows.

Windows never came with fortune though, which is the best "I didn't ask for this, but would have if I'd known" default I've come across. Yep, old man is now outer and child is inner.

The difference to me between Minesweeper + Solitaire and the Candy Crush incident is that Candy Crush was developed by a third party and, more importantly, is designed to be addictive and separate users from their money. The point of putting Candy Crush on Windows machines was to lure new people into playing Candy Crush and hopefully giving King + MS money. Microsoft is providing access to its users to third parties for profit.

The point of putting Solitaire + Minesweeper on the machine was to demonstrate the OS's capabilities + get people used to using either a computer or a GUI. Solitaire and Minesweeper were installed for the user, Candy Crush was installed for King.

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