Doing this during a Windows 11 install will result in a road block until you fix said connection issues. You literally can't proceed without finding a hidden terminal and disabling the process and restarting. Insane.
It was becoming common knowledge that you could disconnect your machine from networks during installation to use Windows with a local account (i.e. the normal kind of user account that people have used for decades). Microsoft wants people to register online during installation and to use the online account on all their computers, in order to increase the market share of the Windows app store and other Microsoft online services such as OneDrive and Office 365. So it's not malicious, Microsoft is just implementing their strategy to create more monetization opportunities.
I mean, sorry, but I consider that malicious. The OS can create a local account but doesn't give you that option specifically to make you create a windows Live account. That is almost textbook definition of malicious for me.
What's may be more surprising than their malice is your surprise at their malice. These 'dark patterns' are so numerous now it's exhausting to remain duly outraged. I hope there's a future (or alternate universe) where dark patterns, such as this, result in economic loss rather than economic gain.
They might be a Linux desktop user or a free software person in general. If you stick to F/OSS you might still live in a world where that stuff is pretty much entirely absent, experientally.
Then the outrage comes in full force, as a kind of culture shock, whenever some external situation requires you to do something like set up a proprietary desktop operating system.
> I hope there's a future (or alternate universe) where dark patterns, such as this, result in economic loss rather than economic gain.
I agree. I wonder whether that can actually be achieved through end-user savviness alone.
I bought my first Apple device (an iPad) two weeks ago out of necessity and even created an Apple account in advance, assuming Apple will force me to use it. I was very surprised to find a very obvious "Skip" button that let me complete the process with no account.
And just because other manufacturers do it, isn't a reason not to blame MS for what MS did. Nobody forced them to do this and it's not even common practice. The OS wasn't "built with online accounts in mind". It's something nobody asked for and everyone lived happily without before.
From a Windows perspective, Apple might seem somehow generous, but if you're not interested in Apple's cloud services or you're actually concerned about privacy, the Mac setup wizard is still a minefield of shit to opt out of. :-\
Are you able to e.g. install apps without an apple account? I seem to recall simple things like that wasn't possible unless you had signed into an apple account.
Considering that on these Apple devices the Apple store is literally the only entry point for running actual programs on these devices, I would say it is indeed pretty equivalent to "not being able to setup the computer".
You might have bad information. Very little of the software I run on my Mac comes from the App store. Even if your assertion were accurate... You'd still be able to use Safari, and web browsing accounts for the lion's share of most people's computing needs. So the score is:
Windows 11: lay-users can do literally nothing of value with their computer without signing in to an account they probably don't want
MacOS: lay-users can use the internet and download software provided outside of the app store without signing into an account that they probably don't want
Calling these equivalent would be quite an exaggeration.
That is true. I guess I missed that we were comparing the operating systems completely across device categories. However, half of what I said still applies since I explicitly mentioned Safari.
I don't know, almost everyone who has an iPad in my family probably never used an app store. They just use it for browsing, facetime and calendar management - and all these apps are preinstalled. I'm trying to think what I have installed on mine that isn't standard, and it's pretty much.....YouTube? I could browse that through the browser if I wanted to.
Like, my point is that these devices are fully functional out of the box even without an account(but yes, it sucks that you need one to unlock it fully)
> Microsoft wants people to register online [...] in order to increase the market share of the Windows app store and other Microsoft online services
> So it's not malicious
I would have to firmly disagree there. Microsoft are pushing the notion that an online account with some identity provider is a necessity for home computing by hiding the (perfectly functional) option to create a local account.
- This is My procedure (with Lan) to obtain a local Account on W10
Install Windows 10 and go through the OOBE
- Select Region
- Select Keyboard Layout
- SKIP Secondary keyboard layout
- Network connection
- ENABLE Allow PC to be discoverable
- Setup = For personal use
- Account = Offline account
- like old times - a completely standalone PC
- Sign in = Limited experience
- ignore the nudging to make an online account
- User account = <my initials>
- as this gets used for the name of the home folder and I don't want my full name for that
- No password
- to avoid the nonsense socalled "security questions". Password will be set later *after* completing the installation
- Location usage = No
- Find my device = No
- Diagnostic data = Required only
- Improve inking = No
- Tailored experience = No
- Advertising ID = No
- Customise experience = Skip
- Set a password for the account
People are so quick to assume malice whenever a multinational conglomerate practices deception in pursuit of profit. Whatever happened to engaging in good faith?
I think most people don't realize this given how normalized it is. Wealth is a mechanism of distributing limited resources, and thus profit seeking without concern for externalities or creating value makes everyone else worse off.
If one's sole driving concern is making money, a whole lot of evil becomes possible. The other side of profit is power - those with more capital become more powerful. That's the reason Microsoft made this decision. They don't want the average person being able to easily make a local account, they'd much rather force everyone to register an account with them in order to even use their computer. It's just one further notch down the slippery slope of the end of private ownership and personal rights. A small notch, certainly. But it's a small notch in their overall endgame of putting general-purpose computing "back in the bottle" so to speak.
Certain powers in this world want there to be less regulation for the moneymakers in this world. Centralized wealth has been a cancer on humanity for millennia, and we're nowhere near putting the proper amount of shackles on capitalism.
It is absolutely malicious tho ugh, because Windows works perfectly fine with only a local account, and tbh it would still be malicious, and actually even more malicious, if they managed to change windows to make it not work anymore with just a local account. I suspect they won't and that nrobypass or something equivalent will remain for the forrseable future. Maybe a regulation authority will even force them to provide back the offline option out of the box.
That explanation is exactly what I meant by malice. Microsoft is trying to force people to do something to their own computers that they don't want to do and that isn't actually necessary to do.
It's worse than that. The account it creates is somehow "special". I have not yet figured out a way to connect to a computer with an MS account via RDP (yes, RDP is on and allowed through the firewall, the user is a local admin (the default)). Ditto for accessing that PC's shares.
FWIW, I just did this two days ago with a Win11 machine that I set up solely for remote access.
Created an MS account (because I want this machine to be as normal-user as possible), set up a PIN. Signed in with a PIN to the desktop, run 'Remote desktop settings' and fip the 'Remote Desktop' toggle to on and affirm the prompt that asks if you really want to do this.
After that no issue RDPing to the machine by IP or hostname from another machine on the same LAN. Username and password is the same as the MS account I first signed in with.
(For reference, Windows 11 22H2 running on an HP Prodesk 600 G5, RDPing from macOS using Microsoft Remote Desktop 10.7.10 installed via App Store.)
You have to delete the PIN it forced you to create during OOBE. This forces the system to apply your MSA's password to the actual account. Without this step, the account has no password. You can still recreate the PIN afterwards and it won't delete the password.
PIN is only used for local logins because it's part of Windows Hello, meaning it literally is the PIN to unlock the password credentials where they are stored in the TPM.
You can also try to join a domain, enter bad credentials, wait for the error to show up, and then select a local account I believe. That may not be available in the home edition of Windows 11, though.
IIRC you don't need bad credentials. It just offers to create a local account, without even asking to connect to the domain.
But yeah, I'm pretty sure the domain join is only an option on the pro and enterprise editions.
I've also found out that the domain join is only offered if it can contact the internet. I installed this on a brand-new laptop the other day, and it didn't detect the wifi card and it had no wired network. It absolutely refused to go past the "let me connect to the internet" phase until I went through the "hidden terminal" dance.
The "domain join" is misleading. It does not really join the domain, it just creates local account. Joining domain has to be done manually after installation. (Otherwise, network connection is a logical requirement for for domain join, you need to contact DC after all.)
This is in a stark contrast with current linux desktop distributions, which do allow domain join straight from their OOBE.
Windows experience is worse and worse. On my Windows 10 company provided PC I found games installed remotely. In a professional PC!
A friend of mine found Spotify installed [1]. That's insane.
One of the companies I was in actually blocked the entire MS Store through policy, but this results in most of Windows 10 going batshit insane (e.g. the Settings app will not even allow you to change keyboard layouts, because to retrieve language files it must go to the MS Store).
That reminds me of when they made it impossible to get rid of IE by making it a hard dependency of most of the rest of the OS. Why won't they get in as much trouble for this as they did for that?
I’m not saying it makes it okay, but the “Professional for Workstations” edition does not have any sort of sponsored start menu items or auto-installs.
Not that I know of. But it won't install on "normal" PCs, it requires "workstation-level" CPUs. If you install it on a regular PC, it will just revert to regular win 11 pro.
I don't know if this changed with the 22h2 upgrade, but it's the behavior I'd noticed before.
That’s not the case at all, and never was. I remember when Microsoft gave out free upgrade licenses for Windows 10 Workstation when it first came out, and it’s just an upgrade.
The weird CPU spec thing is that Microsoft doesn’t let you sell a high end desktop computer with “regular” Windows Pro, and requires instead that it comes with Workstation. But you can either version on any grade of CPU as long as it runs Windows in the first place
Is your company big enough to be able to afford Windows 10 Enterprise instead only Windows 10 Pro? Because on the latter, you can't stop all of that from being installed.
I am similarly bewildered by everyone going along with it. I am not in on whatever cruel joke is being played on us.
My best guess after turning my head 270 degrees, closing one eye, and squinting the other is that the noun is Microsoft/Windows, and the verb is running the ncsi daemon and having it fail the check.
Yes, can confirm I was installing Win11 on my brother-in-law's new PC that I built last week and there were no default drivers for the USB wifi adapter I had attempted to reuse from his old machine. The entire process was roadblocked wanting me to plug into Ethernet until I researched the secret keyboard combination that allows you to shell out and then restart with the ability to do a network-free install.
I was using a Win 11 Pro installer stick on a Surface 4 the other day paired with a USB Ethernet interface. Aside from the fact that keyboard and mouse don’t work, because Windows doesn’t have drivers for a Microsoft Surface during install, I was able to convince Microsoft that I have no connection by unplugging the Ethernet cable right before the Microsoft account login prompt. Maybe I was lucky? Or really old installer? (Got it from Amazon Japan)
It’s definitely not an OS I would like to make my daily driver. I just hope Apple won’t go down that road with macOS.
I ran into this a few weeks ago with an Intel 12th Gen NUC. The Windows 11 install media does not have drivers for the LAN nor the WiFi so it just sits there saying you need to connect to a network to complete setup.
How on earth did Microsoft okay releasing a Professional version of their OS that offers no suggestion on how to finish the install when no network devices are detected?
A simple Google found me the answer but it is piss poor UX to offer zero options when it knows there is no network interface to enable.
People like to joke that you need the Terminal in Linux still and yet I couldn't even install the brand new Windows 11 on a computer without needing to open a command prompt using a keyboard shortcut and enter some cryptic command which rebooted my machine and enabled some hidden option.
