Microsoft really wants you to set up Windows 11 using a Microsoft account. Not content with previous measures to gently nudge users towards this option, the company is now taking more aggressive actions. In the latest preview builds of Windows 11, users have found that some popular workarounds to avoid setting up a Microsoft account no longer work.
Some people may be of the opinion that it is easier to go with the flow and just follow the Microsoft directive to use a Microsoft account. In reality, however, it isn’t that simple. Recently, I built a new PC for a friend. In order to make sure the drivers were installed and configured correctly, Windows also needed to be installed. Since my friend lives a couple of hours away, that meant either using my own account, or having him send me his login details. Neither of these scenarios is ideal for security and privacy reasons, so a workaround became a necessity.
Microsoft, however, does not appear to be sensitive to these concerns. The company has blocked some Command Prompt workarounds that could be used to bypass the Microsoft login and set up a local account. The common ‘oobe/bypassnro’ was removed from Windows installer builds a few months ago. Now the ‘start ms-cxh:localonly’ command is likewise blocked and will no longer show the local account creation screen.
This poses several inconveniences for those building PCs for others, as well as those who need air-gapped PCs, or those in areas with poor or unreliable internet. The situation is also not ideal for use here at Club386, as our test platforms usually have a clean installation for benchmarking purposes.
It is fairly likely that other workarounds will be discovered in the coming months. For now, simply using an older installer and then updating appears to be the best method.
