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Comment by password4321 | Hacker News Reader

I was in a hurry trying to log into my kid's Minecraft account, wound up clicking something to associate it with the Windows account... now the PC is in restricted mode and I'm having a hard time restoring the previously associated Microsoft account (among other things, have to ask permission to open the browser and approve the requests logging in on my phone)!

Everything online says to use the option to switch to a Windows account but I am pretty sure it is not available anymore.

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I ran into this trying to set up a new Dell laptop for my mom. It shipped to her in "S mode", meaning that among other things I couldn't install arbitrary software from the web. I assumed there'd be some straightforward way to disable it (even if it might be a little buried to discourage normies). But after several hours of searching through tutorials and mucking about in Windows settings, the command prompt, BIOS, and even the system registry, and I flatly could not do it. Never seen anything like it before. Ended up wiping and replacing Windows with Linux Mint, which she was happy with.

Microsoft keeps being the best advocate for Linux.

Except normies don't have the option at computer stores.

Even the OEMs that do offer the option to have Linux pre-installed keep pushing for "Works best with Windows".

What is a non technical user to do, the choice ends up being macOS, Windows, or ChromeOS thin clients.

this is the primary problem to begin with.

MS windows installs are not being purchased because they are better or more desirable, the option to purchase non MS installs has been scuttled by MS licensing and bundling thier way into exclusive OEM installs.

Bundling of Microsoft Windows

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundling_of_Microsoft_Windows

Microsoft litigation

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_litigation

First DuckDuckGo result for "windows s mode": https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/switching-out-of...

You're responding to a comment talking about hours of tutorial dives and advanced config tweaks, my guy. You really think the official fix isn't the first thing I tried?

That button simply doesn't work. I forget the exact error message, but it was something generic and unhelpful. (Spoiler: none of the other solutions in the first few pages of search results worked, either.)

For that, you must know that there is such a thing like "Windows S mode".

As I have mentioned, in another comment, some years ago I had the same problem when replacing an old corporate laptop with a new one, but at that time nobody from the IT support knew about the existence of the "Windows S mode".

At that time, seeing that none of many IT support people could do anything, I assumed that there was some kind of miscommunication inside the IT department, and there was some administrator who had configured some kind of secure Windows mode on my laptop, but the others were not aware about this.

Now I know that the laptop had come like this directly from Dell, but for some reason the IT department did not know about it.

When I worked at a very big US company some years ago, I received for work a new Dell laptop with Windows also in "S mode", to replace an older Dell laptop.

However, at that time I had no idea about the existence of the "S mode". I could not install on the laptop some applications that were distributed and used internally in the company and which were essential for my work.

I requested assistance from the IT department, but at that time not even they had any idea about the existence of the "S mode", so they were equally baffled why on my previous Dell laptop I could easily install any application, while on its new replacement I could not. For a couple of weeks, various IT support people from teams located on several continents had repeatedly connected remotely to my laptop every day, trying to solve the problem, but without any success.

That’s crazy, surely it would have been cheaper to buy a new laptop at that point. I mean if you combine all the costs of those people trying to problem solve, plus the opportunity cost of you not being able to do your work…

Your assumption is that such big companies operate in a logical manner, the employee is a ball-bearing in a huge machinery, why should they care. IT support is probably outsourced, so for them is likely good to bill more hours.

https://www.google.com/search?q=Windows+also+in+%22S+mode%22 "Switching Out of S Mode If you find that S mode is too restrictive, you can switch out of it for free. However, according to Microsoft Support, doing this is a one-way street—once you leave S mode, you cannot go back without completely reinstalling Windows.To switch out of S mode:Open the Start Menu and click Settings.Navigate to System > Activation.Look for the Switch out of S mode section.Click Go to the Store.On the page that opens in the Microsoft Store, click Get"

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48537350

I responded because your solution was to use Linux Mint which I have installed a few times on older hardware. My experience getting older relatives to use Mint has not gone well. The most common is their reliance on Microsoft Office. Windows S mode and having to use the Microsoft Store might save me time supporting them.

"My experience getting older relatives to use Mint has not gone well. The most common is their reliance on Microsoft Office"

I was asked by an older friend to put Linx on their computer because they were too frusterated with MS Windows. She also used MS Word and Powerpoint a lot. I said that I had installed a different version of Offce because it was all I had at the time, so the menus would be slightly different. It was three years before she discovering that LibreOffice was not Microsoft Office. By that time it didn't matter.

God, that's the worst. Minecraft is also what led us to accidentally bind my child's account to the administrator account on my TV PC, and because he's a minor we can't actually unbind that account. I've tried for hours and have not succeeded.

"Just make a new account." It's possible but then we'd have to make sure we get every single saved game for all the various games moved over and ugh.

> […] but then we'd have to make sure we get every single saved game for all the various games moved over […]

Every single game save? Why? I get it if you are deep into a month long Factorio game or have a huge Minecraft world, but on the whole games are ephemeral entertainment. If it's not worth backing up, it's usually fine to just start a new game.

This'll tell you where saves are [1]. Move the important games first, and come back when he asks about the rest.

[1] https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Home

Kinda inverse for me but abandoned Windows after having a local account for my kids, and I bought them MS Flight Simulator on my Microsoft Account from the MS Store.

There was no way to use this expensive purchase from the kid's account on the same machine! Stupid bullshit - I gave up on Windows from then on.

I have to figure out by my kid's new Minecraft account is banned/blocked or whatever even though she hasn't even used it, looks like the standard pump for extra PII scam every account setup runs now. She was about on the verge of tears telling me about it.

I deal with the shenanigans at work but I'm at least paid to eat shit there. That's how they run things I guess, you give them money, then they extort you to get more if you want what you paid for or they'll make your kid cry. I'm grinding my teeth just thinking about it.

> Everything online says to use the option to switch to a Windows account but I am pretty sure it is not available anymore.

Not everything. I say: use the option to switch to Linux.

I installed PopOS and Steam for my 11 y/o. She games either on her Nintendo Switch (not Microsoft) or on her iPad (not Microsoft) or on Linux (not Microsoft).

Wife works from a Debian desktop PC, so do I.

Microsoft is not allowed in this house.

An option only available on households with UNIX skills, and work that has zero dependency on using Microsoft products.

Something that isn't available to everyone.

If you need office open a browser, in the unlikely case that libreoffice doesn't do.

Says someone that never used native Office versus Office Web.

Yeah Web version will do, if everything you need is doable with Microsoft Works, and no collaboration with others is required.

Google docs serves my word processing needs, then again I don't do anything at home that wasn't already possible in Word 2.0 for Windows 3.1, Wordpad, or AmigaWriter.

Word is just a bloated wordpad, and that's how people use it - to write text with paragraphs and justifications (recently wordpad supports docx). Excel is just a bloated csv viewer, that's how people use it - to make tables with text in them, notably price lists. My company is an ms shop and uses ms office offline and google docs for collaboration. First time I hear that ms office can into collaboration beyond sharepoint.

Then you have a limited view of creative way how humans collaborate, and clearly don't need bloated Office at all.

It's network effect. People use ms office not because they need its features, but because they receive ms office documents.

We converted some our docs from docx to markdown. The twist is that markdown supports tables, so it can replace both Word and Excel. Then I guess gitlab renders it. Literally markdown. It's stored in git, supports diffs, version history, collaboration is done with merge requests.

Good luck. I lost access to 3 of my 5 Minecraft licenses due to Microsoft login, and I’ll never forgive Microsoft for it.

Same here. That's when I switched my kids' machines to Linux. That was just 2 months back.

And was Windows 11 bug free, no. Was it easier to use, no. Absolutely irritating OS.

I switched my kids to Linux too. They have a multi-seat setup so now they can both use the PC at the same time. With the state of Linux gaming, we have yet to encounter a reason to boot back into Windows.

As a feature, the games that refuse to work under Linux tend to be the type that sell cosmetics or other things you probably don't want to deal with anyway. Or infuriating salty MOBA types.

Amusingly enough, I’ve had certain EAC games work _better_ under Linux than windows.

I used to dread seeing the EAC splash because it inevitably meant frequent crashes on windows, with no such issues on Linux.

amazing！

Pretty sure I’ve got multiple copies of Minecraft thanks to Microsoft login bullshit.

Recently moved desktop to Linux though so hopefully don’t need to deal with them again

I ran into similar MS account hell when trying to get my kid's Xbox account signed back in.

Absolutely hate it. Can't wait to ditch Xbox for PS.

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