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Comment by tredre3 | Hacker News Reader

On W10 you only get the option to create a local account if your network is disconnected, and only after multiple screens of insistence. A normal person being asked to connect to wifi during setup will do so and never have the option to not create a MS account. So it may not be impossible to create an offline account, but for all intents and purposes they do force your hand.

On W11 you have to resort to more esoteric tricks, you can't actually complete setup normally without network and a ms account.

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> On W11 you have to resort to more esoteric tricks, you can't actually complete setup normally without network and a ms account.

Maybe with the latest images, but I have an original W11 RTM image that installs just fine without network and a MS account.

Probably you have the "Pro" version, which allows this.

The Home version does not.

Correct: with the latest images, W11 will not under any circumstances allow you to avoid creating an MS account. It will insist you go online and halt the installer until you do.

Rufus (https://rufus.ie/en/) offers an option to revert fix this, but you still have to ensure that you keep wifi disconnected and ethernet unplugged during install.

Actually yes it will - at least as of last weekend. During OOBE setup, after connecting to Ethernet or Wi-Fi, you must select “join a work or school domain.”

I got tripped up by this too because I was insistent on not connecting it to the internet during setup, but the local account only switch had moved since I last checked up on it.

It will still ask you three or four times ARE YOU SURE you don’t want to sign in to a Microsoft account. But at least you can still avoid it for the moment.

Probably only for Pro edition, not Home

I'm fairly sure if you try to login with f@you.com it'll try to log you in and fail a few times and let you make an account.

> Correct: with the latest images, W11 will not under any circumstances allow you to avoid creating an MS account. It will insist you go online and halt the installer until you do.

Huh. Aside from the ethics, this creates a chicken-and-egg problem for anyone who needs a PC to set up their home internet.

Most people would just get a pre-configured router from their ISP that you can just plug in.

Even those sometimes require some kind of activation on a network-connected PC or phone. It's probably not very common, but it happens.

> On W10 you only get the option to create a local account if your network is disconnected, and only after multiple screens of insistence.

This isn't correct. Even with network connected, it's 2 "no thanks" clicks to continue with a local account. If you don't have network connected, you go straight to local account as the only option.

At least this is the case with the last 3 versions of W10, and a normal single-user product key, or if you skip the product key. I guess if you use an enterprise or volume key it might be different.

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