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Comment by 2muchcoffeeman | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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 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).

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.

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.

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.

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)

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.

Exactly so.

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

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.

"Look, MS account signups grew!"

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