Wouldn’t it be possible to buy a new PC, open the box, and return it right after because you cannot set it up without internet?
If enough people do it, may be PC manufacturers will force Microsoft to add offline setups.
Funny you say that, setting it up without internet is one of the few ways left to still be able to create a local account.
There’s no clear path from getting the computer out of the box just setting it up without internet. If you call the manufacturer and they know what the hell they’re doing they’ll walk you through doing the OOBE no internet fix. It just needs to be an option in the damn operating system. The fact that they’re hiding it from you is unconscionable.
On a new install, before powering up, make sure you don’t start it up with Ethernet plugged in, when you get to the Wi-Fi connection stage hit Ctrl+f10
Type in
oobe\bypassnro
And press enter. The computer will restart and now when you get to the Wi-Fi connection screen you’ll have a like that says “I don’t have internet”.
I love how there is an entire group of people who think it’s perfectly normal to “fight” the company that makes the OS they use.
(This message brought to you by the Linux gang.)
hey, windows users… your OS actively hates you!
that is all.
Ubuntu users fight Canonical all the time too.
As soon as I started doing that, I hopped distros.
Exactly, as lest when your distro starts doing things you don’t like, another can easily take its place in your set up.
I’ve been debating for a while to switch windows to Linux and see how well it works for my games, thanks Microsoft for finally pushing me to do it!
Only thing keeping me on windows has been games (all other development use is far easier on Linux); but with the work that happened with Steam Deck, many games are now fully functional on Linux.
I just did it with Linux Mint. Works great. No issues so far. Just do it.
I’ve heard you can use a cheap local RADIUS server to establish a local domain. Anyone attempt this?
Not Radius,Samba. But yes. In theory the Samba server can even run on a VM on the same PC(but that makes it really messy). Raspi or similar is far easier.
Univention offers a ready made distro for that,but not for ARM, though.
lack of local accounting means its no longer your operating system, youre now using a perpetually required service from microsoft.
the walled garden is putting the last bricks in place. hope all you windows fans are …happy… asking
applemicrosoft for permission to use your own hardware.It’s a real shame. I guess I’ll be running Linux now.
I switched to Bazzite not long after the Recall AI announcement, shrinking my Windows partition to leave it for just VR stuff which currently doesn’t work well outside of Windows, at least on my system. It’s pretty great! Not perfect, but the problems I have on Bazzite are similar enough in quantity and degree to problems I had on Windows that I’ve basically switched out one set of weird OS quirks for another. The big difference is now I don’t have to think about the OS being disrespectful corporate spyware.
“Our Computer”
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Apple doesn’t actually make it at all difficult to use a Mac or iOS device without an Apple account. You’re asked once during setup and that’s it. At most there’ll be a red dot in Settings>iCloud.
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There’s one notice, and it’s in the System Settings app. And it’s a little red dot beside the iCloud section. That’s not really the same league as what Microsoft is doing, or Even Google’s nag to use Chrome across all their Web properties.
You’re right about the first-party apps that you can’t remove, but it’s also not the same as, eg, Edge where those apps are used constantly and your preferences are reset on every update.
On my Mac I set my browser to Firefox in 2018. It’s never reverted to Safari, not once, where Windows really wants me to use Edge and goes so far as to not just reset it periodically, but also direct start menu searches and in-app web links to an ms-edge: url instead of using the http handler.
Apple has problems, but this isn’t one of them.
OOBE\BYPASSNRO and fuck Microsoft
That no longer works sadly
Unless I missed something, the article states as follows
Another method of bypassing the account lockdown still exists. You simply have to enter OOBE\BYPASSNRO in the command prompt during the Windows 11 setup process, which allows you to skip the connection to the Internet and thus also the link to a Microsoft account.
Tried that a few months ago with a factory new machine and it did not work. Though it might work on Pro machines
That’s interesting! I wonder if they are locking down factory installations.
About a month ago I was able to do it with a fresh install of Pro in a VM, I’ll do a quick test and see if it works on Home…and it works too. I had to disconnect the network and then run the
OOBE\BYPASSNROcommand, it rebooted and gave me the continue without network and limited setup options.That’s super weird, but disconnecting the network is the only way that you can reliably setup the machine without an account in my experience
You just need quotes on it, ms fucked up the directory traversal “oobe/bypassnro.cmd” worked for me setting up a user machine yesterday
Of course they did, urg
