Microsoft is ruining Windows. It just keeps getting worse. Whether it be their insistence on AI and cloud garbage, or just a general sense of incompetence, I can’t help but feel like the operating system has seen better days.
Normally I wouldn’t care too much, big tech ruins another thing, whatever.
But the problem is Microsoft has such a dominant market share that you can’t really escape them.
I guess unless you use a Mac or something I don’t know.
I recently reset a laptop with Windows 11 on it, prior to installing Linux, and went through the setup process again. It is so bad now, the offline account option was completely missing and it was constantly trying to push Microsoft services on me. It felt very reminiscent of how freeware installations often try to trick users into accepting additional third party garbage.
FWIW, you can still press Shift-F10 to open a command prompt, then run
oobe\bypassnro. The computer will reboot / restart the setup process and this time there’ll be a small link “I don’t have internet” that’ll allow you to set up a local account.Just make very sure not to connect it to the internet (cable or Wi-Fi) before this point.
There have been rumours of newer versions of Windows 11 not allowing the bypass anymore, but I haven’t personally seen any evidence of this so far.
Still a shit show though - trickery like this shouldn’t be necessary.