Just bought a new PC, it won't let me use it unless I create a Microsoft account | Hacker News Reader

Just bought a new PC, it won't let me use it unless I create a Microsoft account

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28 pointstosh37 comments

First, let me be clear that I absolutely dont condone requirements to create an account, but the complaint coming from Musk is rich considering he now requires an account to use Twitter and his draconian api costs.

Twitter is viewable without having an account. I assume by use, you mean post? How would that work?

I went to https://twitter.com/ and only got the login page. You can see individual posts without an account, but most other read-only functionality is hidden behind the login wall.

Nitter

Nitter is dead[0], unfortunately

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39382590

And thank god for not having those spam links to nitter after every twitter post on hn anymore.

Let's do the same to twitter links and get rid of them too, please. Without nitter links, twitter links are completely useless to those of us who would rather not have a Xitty account.

Which is not twitter(X) and supports OPs complaint. Paywalls/login walls are everywhere, even if they're gating botspam garbage.

"Twitter is viewable without having an account"

No it isn't. If you don't have an account you can view an individual tweet, but you can't see threads and you can't see replies.

I'm still annoyed about https://twitter.com/simonw/status/1077737871602110466 - I spent over a year building a thread of behind-the-scenes Spider-Verse content and it's now effectively invisible to anyone who isn't signed in to Twitter.

You can't even see someone's most recent tweets without signing in! Visit https://twitter.com/simonw while signed out and you'll see a random selection of my popular tweets from the past few years - but you won't see my most recent content any more.

When you view a Twitter post without being logged in it will only show you the post itself, not the rest of thread. You only get to see that when logged in. And of course the Twitter.com start page itself gives you no way to even find any posts to begin with.

To give him some credit, it’s not like he makes you have a Twitter account to use a Tesla or a launched satellite.

By that same logic, no one put a gun to his head and made him buy into Windows.

He didn’t buy windows, he bought a new PC. Or did I get it wrong?

He bought a PC with a windows license. He can choose to install a new OS if he wishes. I also do think the account creation step is bullshit.

You get passed it by opening a shell and invoking the networkless version of the OoBE.

It's bullshit of the highest order.

But AFAIK he does make you have a Tesla account to use a Tesla.

You need an account to drive a tesla

https://www.tesla.com/support/how-create-or-delete-tesla-acc...

To control it remotely or use phone as a key - yes. But to drive you can use keys. And it doesn’t use your data unless you opt in.

The solution is available on Internet... [1]

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/windows/comments/11r9q8o/windows_11...

Wait... there isn't an IT team securing that guy's devices ?

Not sure I would trust IT team if I was at his level

This is about Microsoft, not Windows

There's some weird magic incantations that worked for me ~6 months ago, involving breaking open a secret console, tying random arcane shit, and disconnecting the computer from the internet, in a precise sequence. Who knows how long these procedures last. https://www.tomshardware.com/how-to/install-windows-11-witho...

The idea that an OS wouldn't even install without Internet connection is wild.

A new years resolution was to stop using Windows on my desktop, my only windows machine. I haven't had to do a windows boot yet this year! I had a couple hiccups setting up Steam (hadn't installed enough :i386 packages, was using my existing NTFS mounts & you need to symlink a compatdata in to make that work well), but it's been basically flawless.

(That said, power management has been a beast. My GPU seems to want to run it's memory at max mhz, USB devices power control has been a huge headache & trying to get them to sleep after a reasonable amount of time (>>>2s) hasnt worked like it seems like it should, and susoend hasn't worked on windows or Linux much to my chagrin.)

I re-imaged a machine that came with some malware and used Rufus a tool linked to by Microsoft to do the imaging. It had checkboxes to disable the requirement for online accounts. Probably best to re-image all windows machines these days as who knows what shady things and bloat OEM's and resellers are shipping.

> who knows what shady things and bloat OEM's and resellers are shipping

I remember this being the thing in the 90s too. This hasn't changed. I guess what changed is that Microsoft themselves are doing the shady things (or perhaps doing it openly)

Not to belittle how shitty MS is... but you can use 11 with offline accounts. You have to jump through bullshit to do so but you can still do it.

The average person shouldn't have to know how to do it though.

I'm using Windows 11 that I installed yesterday that has offline accounts. Enabled by jumping through bullshit.

Anyone doing that should be warned that it is not unusual for a new laptop to have the harddrive/SSD encrypted with bitlocker without any notification to the user.

If you don't create a Microsoft account and then later the laptop won't boot or the TPM gets erased then you loose access to all the files on it if you didn't make a copy of the bitlocker key. You can't take the hdd/ssd out and read it using another computer.

You can also be screwed if you don't have access to the email address used for the Microsoft account.

Yes, people should have backups but they often don't.

So what happens if I don’t have internet access? Windows refuses to install?

despite not being able to see twitter, i found a couple small gems.

https://www.process.st/how-to/skip-adding-microsoft-account-...

https://www.askwoody.com/forums/topic/bought-new-laptop-how-...

Of course this is WRONG! Elon should be the one collecting that data!

The required M$ acct fiasco has been going on for years.

The whole thread is literally trolling him at his company's site

I hated this. I had to wipe a brand new laptop because windows wanted me to create that account. Windows 11 is atrocious, long live Linux.

Can't tell if this is intentional irony or unintentional irony.

Windows has become intolerable - I like the Linux support but the baked in ads and other bullshit has me buying a Mac next time.

I went that route too. Back in 2006. I discovered to my horror that the Apple Company that I thought was 'More Ethical Than Microsoft' wasn't.

I've been using "real" Linux (Linux Mint MATE) as my 'Daily Driver' desktop for decades.

Wow. Musk fans flagged this quite fast.

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