Microsoft Account to local account conversion guide erased from Windows 11 guide

Around a year or so ago, I made a new rule for myself:

Stop giving money and support to people and organizations that openly show disdain for me.

It originally came from getting tired of watching (in this case, WoW) streamers talk about how stupid and out of touch “chat” (a group that includes me) is in one breath and then ask for support/subscriptions in the next, but I started applying it to the other things that I consume as well. In this case, here we have a very clear effort by lots of people to not be tracked, and Microsoft making concerted efforts to take away the thing they want for the purpose of making more money.

It’s not feasible to be absolute in this - I still need to put gas in my car and eat, for example. But I find there’s a strangely good feeling to walking away from someone who’s making presumptions about their right to my time, attention, and money while spitting in my face, and I feel like I’m a normal enough person to be a reasonable barometer on that sentiment.

So I guess my point is, I wonder how many times a company like Microsoft can spit in their customers faces before the average person decides to not be a customer anymore.

I would encourage anyone who is comfortable with reinstalling Windows (or knows someone, I am about to do this to my partners PC) to go with the LTSC version of Windows. 11 LTSC is even out now if you want the most compatible version for gaming (I have seen some arguments that there are features in 11 that make games run better but I have yet to be able to really confirm this).

Gives all of the advantages on compatibility (particularly for gaming, I even installed LTSC on my Steam Deck) with having a seriously stripped down version of Windows.

Microsoft is very careful to make it seem like LTSC is so stripped down that it really only works for kiosks or similar devices, but it is perfectly capable as a general computing device. It is possible to install things that it is missing fairly easily, like if you need the Microsoft store (windows store? don't remember the name) to use the Xbox app it will prompt you to install the missing components.

Edit:

Since I got a couple comments about the license. I should have included that here. There is a github project for activation.

Since it is perfectly viable but removes a lot of the crap that Microsoft wants to push of course they don't make it easy to get. But personally if I already have a legal copy of Windows 11 I have no moral problems with using this script to activate LTSC Version.

Getting the ISO is easy with Microsoft providing them free to download.

Edit again:

Instead of replying to every comment regarding to just switch to linux I will edit my post here explaining why I have not.

First off, is for me Windows is primarily for gaming. So compatibility and performance are my number one priority.

Proton is great but you can't beat the compatibility of just using Windows. Never need to worry about an update breaking something or a game not working. It just does. In at least a few cases performance is even better on the LTSC version compared to SteamOS on my Steam Deck.

I also don't want to be restricted to just using Steam for games or needing to jump through additional hoops to play from other stores.

I play video games to relax, that isn't a time that I want to be tinkering or messing with my computer if something goes wrong.

Microsoft's end goal is "Windows as a subscription service". Has always been since Windows 10 times if not earlier.

All these little nasty anti-user bits stem directly from that.

I had to get around this last week during a vm install.

Shift+F10, OOBE\BYPASSNRO, Shift+F10, ipconfig /release, install, ipconfig /renew.

That's a lot of work for the average person and it's only a matter of time before they disable that command.

I'm not a daily driver of windows, but I keep it installed on 1 box for optionality and to act as a beafy steam streaming box. Its frustrating enough to fight through the microsoft account stuff in the more recent versions, but the thing that pisses me off the most is their insistence on adding and/or re-enabling things _on every update_. I dont login often but when I do theres yet another service enabled or re-enabled on startup that I need to remove. Its the most frustrating game of whack-a-mole ever.

Dont even get me started on trying to do the same with my kids accounts on the same box. I suppose group policies are probably the answer but it shouldn't be this hard, and it shouldn't be this frustrating.

I've been using Microsoft accounts on Windows desktops for the last 5 years or so. The Minecraft change was probably the main push, now I know why they spent a billion dollars on that.

When you've got a bunch of desktops and no Windows domain controller it's a good feature. Makes login and synching work pretty well. There hasn't been a visible downside compared to local logins, though not enough upsides for Microsoft to push it so hard.

I use the "Microsoft Family Safety" features for limiting application usage and daily login times. This is the only real benefit I've gotten, but it's a good one. Don't have an Xbox but I hear some nice features for that were messed up recently.

I switched my gaming/ai pc from windows to linux few months ago, and I have to say gaming for linux is very doable now, I only had few issues with battle.net but now that its setup it works fine.

And not to mention all torch and cuda stuff works just fine.

I wrote a post about it recently: https://punkx.org/jackdoe/linux-desktop.html and using it few more months I can only say that the experience is even better. I even did dist and everything kept working. So if you are thinking of giving linux a chance, now is a good time :)

My daughter's school is a "Microsoft school", and its basically forbidden to be with non Windows laptop.. even though everything works fine on macos/linux etc, even the safe exam browser.

I have never been involved in her school's policies, but this is just ridiculous. The way Microsoft claws their ways into schools and governments is just brilliant. There is a mix of incompetence, corruptions and people's people fear of being fired, and sunk cost fallacy, and its just deadlocked.

I only have a windows machine for gaming... Eyes on Valve as they March towards Linux being a first class gaming platform.

I'll ask here since I'm sure theres experience in the audience: it looks like theres no good answers for roblox on non-windows [1]? How about Minecraft Bedrock? Roblox and minecraft are the only things I really need to support in order to remove the windows install from my network.

[1] - https://vinegarhq.org/Home/rol_faq.html#what-alternatives-do...

I wouldn't mind if Microsoft didn't keep breaking Windows PIN and Windows Hello.

Enabled it on a private PC but a different account (a work one) owns the Office license, and now Windows knows that there is an account that owns the Windows license and a different account that owns the Office license.

Result? All kinds of fun that looks like this https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/window... and has many many recommended answers, of which none worked.

What did work, was removing the work account via Accounts > Work or School, and falling back to a local account and password for Windows. At least I can sign in to the machine again.

Keep in mind this article is kind of clickbait:

>the instructions on how to do the latter appeared on June 12, 2024, then disappeared on June 17, 2024.

The information was only ever published for 5 days.

The only Microsoft account I have is my 20 year old hotmail that has an appropriate name for a 16 year old who discovered the internet.

If I can't make a local account, I will not use it.

Microsoft appears to be doing everything it can to ensure the majority of power users abandon Windows and switch to Linux desktop.

Once Win10 stops receiving security updates, I'm unlikely to bother installiny Windows 11. I don't really need it, as most games work fine thanks to the Valve Steam efforts.

It's kind of sad, I've always had at least one Windows machine as my primary desktop since 1998.

There are ways how to create local account during Windows installation. It worked for me few months ago.

https://www.pcmag.com/how-to/how-to-set-up-microsoft-windows...

If someone is looking for a Windows-replacement Linux machine, I'd like to plug Zorin OS. It's Ubuntu-based, and the most seamless out of the box experience I had with Linux. I just installed my stuff from the GUI software center and it was good to go.

Apple used to allow signing in locally with an iCloud password. Now they actively forbid using the same password for local and iCloud accounts...

This is great. The sooner MSFT kills itself in this way, the sooner major institutions who are tired of this can switch to alternatives.

What about macos? Is it easier to install and use without an account?

Microsoft loves pushing people to buy macOS devices it would seem.

Windows really does have the potential to be ideal for professionals, the things macOS does that make it better are all small but Microsoft just seems to paramount on sabotaging their operating system.

I really feel sorry for OEMs that really don't have a choice but to ship Windows and have to stomach this shit being associated with their products.

Right there are much friendlier ones like pop os and mint.

streissand effect in play maybe?

i think they lose more from this getting publicized than any losses from having this publicly available for the week or so.

I get how they made their sign up funnel confusing, but I personally didn't need a guide to make a local account. It was all right there in the setup UI, if you click around. I believe it just took a "skip" or "cancel" or "no thanks" or two, nothing too outrageous. I love my Debian laptop and my Mac laptop, but few people are about to give up an entire OS over petty annoyances where workarounds exist. Windows has survived countless silly experiments like this over the decades. Windows could require you to Skype a video of your butt to Satya Nadella to log in, and half the world would still do it, that's how wide their moat is. So much AAA software locked in as Windows-only. Solidworks, Cyberpunk 2077, etc. Just being the contrarian to the expected Hacker News sentiment of "microsoft just killed itself".

Windows erased from my hard drive.

Debian Stable (Linux) welcomes escapees from lobster boiling:

https://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/current/amd64/iso-dvd/