Clean reinstall / local account - any new details?

I'm about to do a clean reinstall of Win11 on my wife's laptop. Most of the non-vanilla instructions I've seen related to avoiding (or not being able to avoid) using a Microsoft account. Most instructions were from months ago, and Microsoft seemed to be actively blocking the techniques people were describing. I don't mind having to use my Microsoft account to activate Windows as long as I can return to a local account afterwords. But I do want to control the name of my user profile folder. What are the current tricks for doing this? Is there any alternative to letting MS set the name it wants and then changing it later?

pokeefe0001 said:

I'm about to do a clean reinstall of Win11 on my wife's laptop. Most of the non-vanilla instructions I've seen related to avoiding (or not being able to avoid) using a Microsoft account. Most instructions were from months ago, and Microsoft seemed to be actively blocking the techniques people were describing. I don't mind having to use my Microsoft account to activate Windows as long as I can return to a local account afterwords. But I do want to control the name of my user profile folder. What are the current tricks for doing this? Is there any alternative to letting MS set the name it wants and then changing it later?

Click to expand...

IF you are doing a clean install just to fix a problem... you might want to try an In-Place upgrade instead.
That way all the User details will remain, along with her programs and files.








Here is the short version of the In-place upgrade tutorial...

DISABLE non-Microsoft:
a) antivirus software
b) firewall software
c) drive encryption software

Make a full OS backup with a program like Macrium Reflect (free)
Macrium Software | Macrium Reflect Free

Go here and get the Windows 11 ISO (use the 3rd option), and save the ISO to your desktop.
Download Windows 11
The ISO must be downloaded in the same language as you are using in Windows, to be able to keep your Programs and Files.




Right click the ISO image and choose: MOUNT
Open File Explorer and you will see a new drive letter. It will "look" like a DVD optical drive.
Double click the new drive letter to open it.
Find setup.exe and double click it to start the in-place upgrade.

Choose the Keep personal files and apps option.

After it's all done... to UNmount the ISO image, right click the new drive letter and choose: EJECT.


The ONLY thing you will lose is some of your personalizations. Your programs and data will be intact.

Another option is to do a clean install of Windows 10, set it up how you like, then do an In-Place upgrade to Windows 11.



I think you can still do a clean install of Win 11, perform some voodoo during the install to end up with a local account.
But once I joined the chrch of the In-Place upgrade... I quit worrying about the voodoo methods.

I've been fighting a Dell problem for about 10 months. Dell support has recently asked me yo reinstall Windows (without specifying clean or in-place even though I asked). And doing an upgrade-in-place to go from Win10 to Win11 back in march (or some time) didn't fix it so I don't think another will help. I think I'm stuck with a clean install. Luckily there isn't much on my wife's laptop (and it will get rid of some Dell bloatware).

I'd rather not install Win10 and upgrade just to avoid having to go through the profile folder rename.

The voodoo is in there somewhere.



Note: If you do a clean install of W10 or W11, there will be no DELL stuff on there.

I don't know what the specs are on your wife's DELL, but I just did an In-Place upgrade from W11 21H2 to 22H2, and it took 17 minutes (not including download of ISO)
In Jun 2021 I did and In-Place from W10 to W11 Insider version.
In Oct 2021 I did an In-Place from W10 to W11 public release version.

But I use backup software religiously, so I only did a real W10 clean install, once, back in May 2020.
When it was time for Win 11, I just put a W10 backup on another SSD and then did an In-Place to W11.

I've really only done three clean installs, since 2001.
XP in 2001
Win 7 in 2012
Win 10 in 2020
Then used backup software.

So whatever you end up doing... use backup software from then on.
Most people use Macrium Reflect or AOMEI Backupper. Both have free and paid versions.





The EU crowd will be here in 1-3 hours. The US crowd in 8-9 hours.

Setting up a local account during clean install is step 16 of the tutorial. Make sure your internet is disconnected before this step. In a nutshell this is what you do.
When it gets to point of setting up second keyboard-disconnect internet

· On the “Oops, you’ve lost internet connection” page, use the Shift + F10 keyboard shortcut. This opens a command prompt window.

· In Command Prompt, type OOBE\BYPASSNRO and press Enter.

The computer will restart automatically and the out-of-box experience (OOBE) will start again.

Click the I don’t have internet option.

Click the Continue with limited setup option.

· Click the Accept button (if applicable).

· Confirm the name of the default local account on Windows 11.

· Click the Next button.

· Create a password for the account.

Continue through steps setting up security questions.

Ghot said:

Clean Install Windows 11 Tutorial

This tutorial will show you step by step on how to clean install Windows 11 at boot on your PC with or without an Internet connection and setup with a local account or Microsoft account. Windows 11 has all the power and security of Windows 10 with a redesigned and refreshed look. It also comes...

www.elevenforum.com

The voodoo is in there somewhere.

Click to expand...

That thread is longer now than the last time I looked at it. Comments in it led me to believe MS was making the task harder. But most of the comments relate to people not wanting to use the MS account. I really don't care if I have to use it for a short time.

Ghot said:

Note: If you do a clean install of W10 or W11, there will be no DELL stuff on there.

Click to expand...

That's both the good news and the bad news. I don't really know what Dell stuff is necessary and what is just bloatware. I doubt any of it is absolutely necessary, but some of it may be useful. I think I can download any I need. The tool that finds the right drivers might be useful.

Ghot said:

I don't know what the specs are on your wife's DELL, but I just did an In-Place upgrade from W11 21H2 to 22H2, and it took 17 minutes (not including download of ISO)
In Jun 2021 I did and In-Place from W10 to W11 Insider version.
In Oct 2021 I did an In-Place from W10 to W11 public release version.

But I use backup software religiously, so I only did a real W10 clean install, once, back in May 2020.
When it was time for Win 11, I just put a W10 backup on another SSD and then did an In-Place to W11.

I've really only done three clean installs, since 2001.
XP in 2001
Win 7 in 2012
Win 10 in 2020
Then used backup software.

Click to expand...

I, too, am pretty religious about tasking backups but it never occurred to me to save previous versions of Windows. I kept the Win10 backups long enough to be sure I wasn't going back. Then I removed them.

But that probably wouldn't have helped in this case anyway. The laptop came with a Dell installation of Win10 Pro so there never was a "clean" Win10 installation for it. A few months after getting the laptop I upgraded its BIOS and the wireless adapter stared dying (going disabled) during Macrium Reflect image backups to a NAS. I went back to the original BIOS and all was well. Since then I've tested it on 9 or 10 different BIOS upgrades, - failure on all except that old original. It happened with 3 different drivers for the wireless adapter and across many patches of (originally) Win10 and Win11. And external wireless adapters work fine.

I'm sure the clean reinstall of Windows is not going to fix the wireless adapter problem, but I'm not letting Dell off the hook and they want me to try this.

Oh yeah. There's another problem with the laptop. Optane Storage and Management daily reports SMART errors, claiming that the drive is dying. A manually launched Optane S&M scan finds no SMART errors. CrystalDiskInfo finds no SMART errors. I expect this problem may be fixed with the clean install.

Ghot said:

So whatever you end up doing... use backup software from then on.
Most people use Macrium Reflect or AOMEI Backupper. Both have free and paid versions.

Click to expand...

I've been using Macriun Reflect (paid) for about 2 years and Acronis True Image for 10 years prior to that. I'm pretty good about backups.

glasskuter said:

Setting up a local account during clean install is step 16 of the tutorial. Make sure your internet is disconnected before this step. In a nutshell this is what you do.
When it gets to point of setting up second keyboard-disconnect internet

· On the “Oops, you’ve lost internet connection” page, use the Shift + F10 keyboard shortcut. This opens a command prompt window.
...

Click to expand...

For some reason I thought that no longer worked. I'll give it a try. If I have problems I'll just go ahead using my MS account and change my profile directory name afterwords.

pokeefe0001 said:

I'm about to do a clean reinstall of Win11 on my wife's laptop. Most of the non-vanilla instructions I've seen related to avoiding (or not being able to avoid) using a Microsoft account. Most instructions were from months ago, and Microsoft seemed to be actively blocking the techniques people were describing. I don't mind having to use my Microsoft account to activate Windows as long as I can return to a local account afterwords. But I do want to control the name of my user profile folder. What are the current tricks for doing this? Is there any alternative to letting MS set the name it wants and then changing it later?

Click to expand...

I used Rufus to make a bootable USB drive from an ISO I downloaded and chose the option to not use the internet. Rufus - Create bootable USB drives the easy way

pokeefe0001 said:

For some reason I thought that no longer worked.....

Click to expand...

No, it still works. I tested that for the RTM release of 22H2 only the other day.

What is "oobe\bypassnro" - post #24

Yup. That worked. I assumed that I would have to eventually log onto my MS account to activate Windows, but I did not. It just automatically activated. I'm surprised, but not complaining.

pokeefe0001 said:

Yup. That worked. I assumed that I would have to eventually log onto my MS account to activate Windows, but I did not. It just automatically activated. I'm surprised, but not complaining.

Click to expand...

Good job. ^^

just install with a fake email account and password, it will give you an error and then prompt for a local account after it ways "whoops, something went wrong". I was able to do it just fine on the 22H2 release I build with the media creation tool.

Or just use your regular Microsoft Account to install Windows 11. After it is all done, then create the local account that you want, make it an administrator, log into the local account and then delete the original account that you used to do setup with.

NavyLCDR said:

Or just use your regular Microsoft Account to install Windows 11. After it is all done, then create the local account that you want, make it an administrator, log into the local account and then delete the original account that you used to do setup with.

Click to expand...

Would this work in situation where you got a new windows 11 pro laptop and then just set it up with creating a new microsoft account and password and pin because there was no way to bypass it? I did that.


When I restart laptop now, it ask for the pin so I enter it and log in. But it isn't a local account. I want to start up my laptop, then be asked for bitlocker pin... then a windows password before I get to my desktop similar to like windows 10 pro. So what you describe would work here?


I want to log in with bitlocker pin and a windows 11 password. Is what you post above the best action here? Could I still use bitlocker with the microsoft pin with the setup I have now? I was suggested I could also do a clean reinstall of windows 11 but would you be against that? Want to make it as simple as possible but that microsoft account creating thing at the beginning messed this all up.