I’ve been using Windows for a very long time and over the years there have been things that have been done with the platform that I like and things that I don’t really care for. The one thing that’s happened in the last several years that really kind of pisses me off is the requirement for the use of a Microsoft account when logging into the device.
Generally speaking I don’t like having my devices reliant on an online service just to log into the device and get access to my data. And in a lot of cases I’m more partial to working with services and applications that I can host myself.
I do make use of an Apple ID on my MacBook, but that specific instance gives me some value that you don’t get any other way. The whole ability to respond to text messages from my desktop machine without having to grab my phone makes that specific piece worth having to logon with that Apple ID. And it’s still a local account, so if I’m offline it’s not like I can’t get logged in.
On Windows, well none of the benefits from logging in with a Microsoft account really appeal to me. I don’t get the ability to respond to messages and having my account settings follow me machine to machine isn’t something that I generally want since different machines may have different settings depending on what I’m doing with them.
In older versions of Windows 10 and 11 you could get around this by pressing Shift F10 during the install process to open a command prompt and typing in the command(s) below;
cd oobe
bypassnro.cmd
However the latest versions of Windows 11 have closed that off but someone has already found a way around that by running the command below at the same point in the setup process.
start ms-cxh:localonly
This one operates a bit differently in that it pops up a Windows 10 style dialog to enter in the details for the new local user on the system as opposed to continuing to step through the process in the Windows 11 OOBE (Out of Box Experience).
In either case let’s see how long it’s going to take the folks at Microsoft to lock this one down, and how long it’s going to take for someone to find another method to get around that lock.