Microsoft blocks all options to bypass MS Account on new Installs

Don't retire the machine. Install Windows 11 on it and use it as a secondary computer. If it runs Windows 7 64-bit, you can upgrade yo Windows 10 and then to Windows 11 so you won't have to reinstall all your applications from start. You simply update them after the upgrade to Windows 11.

I'm not going to do that & here's several reasons why.

The W7 machine is 8 years old. It is not powerful enough to run W10 or W11.

The W7 machine has 6 internal SATA HDDs. I will be removing them from that box & attaching them all to the new W11 box in external SATA-to-USB enclosures. Like I have said elsewhere, it doesn't matter what you have, you will outgrow it. Having my disk space like this means I can easily expand my disk space by simply getting another USB HDD. I have 2 USB SSDs now, but they are only 480G. I believe there are larger USB SSDs out there, but they are not yet as big as USB HDDs. If the technology progresses to where USB SSDs are 20T or bigger, I'll get USB SSDs instead of USB HDDs. But all my disk space is about to be external. The only internal disk space I have is the 2T PCI NVMe SSD onto which I have installed W11. If I ever feel the need for more internal SSD space, I have 3 more currently empty M2 sockets I can use. So the W7 box is about to become just a shell: a 500W PSU, a motherboard, a CPU, 2x4G DDR3 DIMMs, a low end graphics card. That's it. And all of it is 8 years old. I have no interest in trying to prolong its already extra long life. It has served me well. It's time to say good-bye.

I don't have the room to run 2 computers at the same time. The geography of my home prohibits considering that. Plus I have just 1 monitor & just 1 keyboard. Yeah, I have my TV. That is not my preferred computer monitor. It's on the other side of the room. Some things that look fine on my primary monitor have me squinting to read them on the TV. Videos & stuff like that do well on the TV. But it's not an acceptable computer monitor for me.

Given the excruciating hassle installing W11 has been, I am not considering punishing myself by doing it again on another machine.

I just don't want 2 computers.

Reinstalling application software is not going to be much of a hassle. I always keep the install executable for any software I add. I am looking forward to putting them all on my shiny new internal SSD. Clearly, given what I am doing with my HDDs, I will not have to migrate my data. All I have to do is install my software again. Plus I think there's a few things I have now that I won't be installing on W11. Seems to me I have a bit of bloat here, programs that I don't even remember why I have them. So the W11 system will be all new & fresh & I like that idea.

If you weren't on the other side of the world from me, I would offer you the remains of my old W7 box as a gift.

WildWilly said:

I'm not going to do that & here's several reasons why.

The W7 machine is 8 years old. It is not powerful enough to run W10 or W11.

The W7 machine has 6 internal SATA HDDs. I will be removing them from that box & attaching them all to the new W11 box in external SATA-to-USB enclosures. Like I have said elsewhere, it doesn't matter what you have, you will outgrow it. Having my disk space like this means I can easily expand my disk space by simply getting another USB HDD. I have 2 USB SSDs now, but they are only 480G. I believe there are larger USB SSDs out there, but they are not yet as big as USB HDDs. If the technology progresses to where USB SSDs are 20T or bigger, I'll get USB SSDs instead of USB HDDs. But all my disk space is about to be external. The only internal disk space I have is the 2T PCI NVMe SSD onto which I have installed W11. If I ever feel the need for more internal SSD space, I have 3 more currently empty M2 sockets I can use. So the W7 box is about to become just a shell: a 500W PSU, a motherboard, a CPU, 2x4G DDR3 DIMMs, a low end graphics card. That's it. And all of it is 8 years old. I have no interest in trying to prolong its already extra long life. It has served me well. It's time to say good-bye.

I don't have the room to run 2 computers at the same time. The geography of my home prohibits considering that. Plus I have just 1 monitor & just 1 keyboard. Yeah, I have my TV. That is not my preferred computer monitor. It's on the other side of the room. Some things that look fine on my primary monitor have me squinting to read them on the TV. Videos & stuff like that do well on the TV. But it's not an acceptable computer monitor for me.

Given the excruciating hassle installing W11 has been, I am not considering punishing myself by doing it again on another machine.

I just don't want 2 computers.

Reinstalling application software is not going to be much of a hassle. I always keep the install executable for any software I add. I am looking forward to putting them all on my shiny new internal SSD. Clearly, given what I am doing with my HDDs, I will not have to migrate my data. All I have to do install my software again. Plus I think there's a few things I have now that I won't be installing on W11. Seems to me I have a bit of bloat here, programs that I don't even remember why I have them. So the W11 system will be all new & fresh & I like that idea.

If you weren't on the other side of the world from me, I would offer you the remains of my old W7 box as a gift.

Click to expand...

Well, the pc spec seems reasonable, and was a fairly new PC when Windows 10 first came out. You could upgrade it to Windows 10 and have a barebones PC which you could give to charity?

There is no point having both computers running at the same time. You could move the old computer at your country house (if you have) or give it away to a relative or friend that wants a low end computer for office use or web surfing. I guess its hardware is good enough for even watching Netflix and other streaming services. Too old an 8 years old PC? Says who? Any dual core system with at least 4GB is more than enough to run Windows 10 or 11 for office internet use. You can even play some casual games (non demanding a super fast graphics card). For comparison I have successfully installed Windows 11 on a single core Intel Pentium 4 640 3.2GHz 64-bit socket 775 system (1st Intel 64-bit family) with 2GB DDR RAM and mechanical 320GB HDD. Yes, it was rather slow, but I did it to prove that Microsoft exaggerates about the system requirements of Windows 11 just to boost hardware sales.

The golden rule is: Can it run a modern OS like Windows 10 or 11? Has it reasonable speed and can do the tasks I want? If the answer to both is yes, then it is still usable, it is not too old.

WildWilly said:

I'm not going to do that & here's several reasons why.

The W7 machine is 8 years old. It is not powerful enough to run W10 or W11.

The W7 machine has 6 internal SATA HDDs. I will be removing them from that box & attaching them all to the new W11 box in external SATA-to-USB enclosures. Like I have said elsewhere, it doesn't matter what you have, you will outgrow it. Having my disk space like this means I can easily expand my disk space by simply getting another USB HDD. I have 2 USB SSDs now, but they are only 480G. I believe there are larger USB SSDs out there, but they are not yet as big as USB HDDs. If the technology progresses to where USB SSDs are 20T or bigger, I'll get USB SSDs instead of USB HDDs. But all my disk space is about to be external. The only internal disk space I have is the 2T PCI NVMe SSD onto which I have installed W11. If I ever feel the need for more internal SSD space, I have 3 more currently empty M2 sockets I can use. So the W7 box is about to become just a shell: a 500W PSU, a motherboard, a CPU, 2x4G DDR3 DIMMs, a low end graphics card. That's it. And all of it is 8 years old. I have no interest in trying to prolong its already extra long life. It has served me well. It's time to say good-bye.

I don't have the room to run 2 computers at the same time. The geography of my home prohibits considering that. Plus I have just 1 monitor & just 1 keyboard. Yeah, I have my TV. That is not my preferred computer monitor. It's on the other side of the room. Some things that look fine on my primary monitor have me squinting to read them on the TV. Videos & stuff like that do well on the TV. But it's not an acceptable computer monitor for me.

Given the excruciating hassle installing W11 has been, I am not considering punishing myself by doing it again on another machine.

I just don't want 2 computers.

Reinstalling application software is not going to be much of a hassle. I always keep the install executable for any software I add. I am looking forward to putting them all on my shiny new internal SSD. Clearly, given what I am doing with my HDDs, I will not have to migrate my data. All I have to do is install my software again. Plus I think there's a few things I have now that I won't be installing on W11. Seems to me I have a bit of bloat here, programs that I don't even remember why I have them. So the W11 system will be all new & fresh & I like that idea.

If you weren't on the other side of the world from me, I would offer you the remains of my old W7 box as a gift.

Click to expand...

Hello WildWilly:

World’s highest capacity PCIe SSD hits 61 TB, and you could fit two in your PC

OR use

M2 NVMe Enclosure - Huge Selection and Top Brands

Folks, I am not going to put any effort into making my old computer usable. I would have to put a hard drive into it (I'm bringing ALL my hard drives to the W11 machine) & then I'd have to install something on it. After what's been going on with this ever so painful W11 install, I'm not even thinking about installing something on the old machine. This was the last Windows install I intend to do for several years. I'm installed out. I know somebody who might be able to take the box & make good use of it. If he says no, I believe Micro Center takes equipment to be recycled.

But guess what? I am posting this from Firefox on W11! 120.0.1 64-bit. Clearly, the second activation key from the vendor was indeed a W11 key. I don't see any way to modify the attributes of a user from Microsoft to local. So I have one Microsoft account that I will probably almost never use, & another one that is local (this one) that I will routinely use every day. If I ever need to connect to my Microsoft account, I expect that I can just get into Firefox & surf to the site to sign in. I can't imagine that actually booting to your desktop with a Microsoft account would be the only way to do this.

Windows Update installed rather more than what it offered me the other day before I got activated. It took F O R E V E R! And the progress indicators are horrendously inaccurate. It sat on 70% for about half an hour. Fortunately, I managed to find the relevant entries in Task Manager that reassured me something was happening. It sure takes a lot, like really A LOT, of patience & faith. There were about 3 reboots after the part that happens from the desktop, & one of them must have taken about 20 minutes before it advanced. Now, I've got an Intel 13th generation i9, which has more cores than I can count on my fingers & toes. So I hate to imagine what this would be like on my old system. Anyway, it shows that everything was successfully installed. I'm assuming that future update will not take this long.

I would like to have WU download updates automatically & notify me so I can install them on my time. Then once I've completed the install, I want to be able to wait as long as I please before I reboot, assuming a lot of updates (not all but a lot) will require rebooting. It looks to me like this approach is not possible. At least, modifying this is not obvious. Clearly, I have more tutorials on here to find & read.

It is going to take a bit of effort to physically remove the disks from the old system & attach them to the new one. And I'm too tired to do it tonight. So W7 is still in my life. But I am a giant step closer to cutting over permanently to W11.

WildWilly said:

I don't see any way to modify the attributes of a user from Microsoft to local.

Click to expand...

There's a tutorial for that.....

WildWilly said:

If I ever need to connect to my Microsoft account, I expect that I can just get into Firefox & surf to the site to sign in. I can't imagine that actually booting to your desktop with a Microsoft account would be the only way to do this.

Click to expand...

...and one for that too.

Thanks, Bree. Of course there's a tutorial for that. There's a tutorial for EVERYTHING on here. I think I'll just leave things as they are for now. But your post is here & I can always come back & read those if I ever see that I need to use them.

Actually, I just looked at those tutorials & I'm not sure they do what I was envisioning. I think you end up with 2 accounts either way. I was thinking of simply altering my user definition that is now a Microsoft account & turning it into a local user. I already have 2 users defined, one a Microsoft account, one local. And a hybrid account seems too complicated. I like this way of operating for now. I may change my mind at some point but . . . time will tell.

When I boot up W11, the BIOS splash screen appears on the monitor plugged into the Display Port outlet on the GPU. That is my primary monitor, not my TV, which is plugged into the HDMI outlet of the same GPU. If I hit F2 to get into the BIOS, the BIOS uses the same monitor connected to the Display Port. So somehow, it has figured out which monitor is primary. It is not prioritizing HDMI over Display Port. There must be some way Windows is telling the BIOS which is my primary monitor. It's working exactly the way I want it to.

I think you end up with 2 accounts either way.

Click to expand...

Not at all – I only installed with one local account, and later enabled built-in Administrator (renamed too) to bypass UAC for administrative tasks

Also plan to downgrade local account to Standard User for day-to-day task

Both are password protected

Certainly on Win 11 pro the old get around of using email addr nobody@nobody.com, password -- anything--- still works. Not sure why that really simple option is ignored by loads using all sorts of other convoluted ways. You get message "OOPS - Something went wrong" -- just click the next button and setup continues with a local account.

Cheers
jimbo

jimbo45 said:

Certainly on Win 11 pro the old get around of using email addr nobody@nobody.com, password -- anything--- still works. Not sure why that really simple option is ignored by loads using all sorts of other convoluted ways. You get message "OOPS - Something went wrong" -- just click the next button and setup continues with a local account.

Cheers
jimbo

Click to expand...

Or just keep disconnected from the internet and at Network Connection screen open a Command Prompt by pressing SHIFT+F10 and execute oobe\bypassnro. It will make some changes and restart. You go through the configuration again. When you are on the network connection screen again click "I don't have an internet connection" to create a local account.

Hi,
Yep oobe still works I used it this week on a new lappy with 11 home.
Upgraded to pro not to long after though.

I haven't done a clean installation of Windows 11 23H2 yet, but all hacks to bypass compatibility check and upgrade an unsupported computer from 22H2 work. Using the ISO and replacing the appraiserres.dll file, check. Using the ISO and running the command setup /product server check. Using a USB flash drive created with Rufus, check. Installing all updates up to build 22621.2506 or higher on 22H2 and then the 23H2 enablement package, check. The hacks for a clean installation on an unsupported computer should also work. From what I read in the forum all workarounds to create a local account also work. I just confirm that for other readers.

One may disagree to agree , however, for 23H2 clean install Rufus 4.3 gives complete control, by default first two are already checked (see below)

Thank you @ProgEngi. I've been forgetting to respond to your post about SSDs. For some reason I thought NVMe SSDs were not yet comparable in size to HDDs. Clearly, I hadn't done my research. As for external enclosures, I actually already knew about those for SSDs. While I was hunting for the SATA-to-USB external enclosures that I did get, I saw a few of those. There's even some that will take an SATA HDD & an NVMe SSD in the same enclosure. You just need to make sure that the enclosure is rated for the size of drive you want to put in it. By size I mean both the physical dimensions of the drive as well as its memory capacity. I was caught out by the memory thing at first.

Meanwhile, my W7 system has been retired. It is a diskless shell now. I have passed the point of no return & I'm using my new computer with my new W11, with all my HDDs in those enclosures I just mentioned. I've installed the basic applications but it's probably going to take me a week before I've installed everything I was in the habit of using. This thread in particular was invaluable in getting me going. I say once again, thank you.

WildWilly said:

Thank you @ProgEngi. I've been forgetting to respond to your post about SSDs. For some reason I thought NVMe SSDs were not yet comparable in size to HDDs. Clearly, I hadn't done my research. As for external enclosures, I actually already knew about those for SSDs. While I was hunting for the SATA-to-USB external enclosures that I did get, I saw a few of those. There's even some that will take an SATA HDD & an NVMe SSD in the same enclosure. You just need to make sure that the enclosure is rated for the size of drive you want to put in it. By size I mean both the physical dimensions of the drive as well as its memory capacity. I was caught out by the memory thing at first.

Meanwhile, my W7 system has been retired. It is a diskless shell now. I have passed the point of no return & I'm using my new computer with my new W11, with all my HDDs in those enclosures I just mentioned. I've installed the basic applications but it's probably going to take me a week before I've installed everything I was in the habit of using. This thread in particular was invaluable in getting me going. I say once again, thank you.

Click to expand...

We are here to help and share knowledge with others (added word here)

That's why I do a clean installation only when I have a major issue I cannot fix in my current system. Because I need days to reinstall all my applications and restore my backup. Of course it hardly is exactly the same like the earlier system and this causes some inconvenience because some things are different from what I was used to. I had the same issue when I wanted to install Windows 11 on my main PC (see my 2nd system specs). I had cloned my Windows 10 SSD in a spare SSD so I could go back to Windows 10 if something went wrong. No matter what I tried I could not upgrade Windows 10 to 11 21H2. Eventually I did a clean Windows 11 installation and reinstalled everything from start. It was not ideal. It took me days to get to where I was in Windows 10 and not exactly the same. It took me over a month to get used to my current system.

On Win11 Home OEM HP Laptop first boot up.
I bought another HP just like a previous one and a fake email address that I've used in the past to bypass the MS Acct didn't work. Just like some in beginning of this thread I tried several, fake@fake.com, nobody@nobody.com and gave fake pswds but now MS puts up this-> Oops . . . Someone has entered an incorrect Password for this acct too many times. To help protect you, we've temporarily locked you (MS) acct. You can reset your password.
Also this HP device doesn't bring up anything on Shift+F10

So I chose Option 1 of glasskuter's post #8

1. set up using MS account, then create a new local account with administrative privileges. Restart. Login to the new account and delete the MS account.

The aggressive world system is slowly removing options in many areas. It's just a matter of how far one is willing to go. A Windows Acct is not that bad at this point. I've had an online MS Acct for a decade that I used to buy some items. I can switch to a local acct afterwards. Is it insulting (?) well yes but considering the players and what's being played it's not surprising, just a sign of the times.