Rufus 25H2 install after initial 25H2 installation

I installed Windows 11 25H2 Pro upon assembly of my new build. IMHO: this was a mistake due to mandatory addition of MS account. Is it possible to do a Rufus, or something similar clean install after my mistake of installing 25H2 including activation key?

I, also have 2 Dell laptops that updated to 25H2 Home a year after purchase. I do not see any Microsoft accounts on these 2 units and still boot up with no password. This is great!!

My reason for this re-install is to eliminate using a Microsoft user account and stick with local accounts.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance
Bill
.

Hello Bill, and welcome to the forum.

You could use the method in the tutorial below to switch to a local account without having to clean install again.

Brink said:

Hello Bill, and welcome to the forum.

You could use the method in the tutorial below to switch to a local account without having to clean install again.

Switch to Local Account from Microsoft Account in Windows 11

This tutorial will show you how to switch to a local account from a Microsoft account to sign in to Windows 11 with instead. You can sign in to Windows 11 with a local account or a Microsoft account. However, you can easily switch between using a local account or a Microsoft account to sign in...

www.elevenforum.com

Click to expand...

I tried that with new user name and new password. Login screen shows new user name, however, new password is ineffective. I have to use ms account password to log in.

Strange. Must be something with 25H2

BillM said:

Is it possible to do a Rufus, or something similar clean install after my mistake of installing 25H2 including activation key?


.

Click to expand...

I did exactly that about 3 weeks ago, using a Rufus-enabled installer on entirely new hardware. I had a MS account before I started, but did not use it at any point in the installation.

I pulled out a lot of my hair, but it was NOT due to Rufus. I had absolutely no experience on 11 prior to this. It is sufficiently different from 10 that I was quite frustrated at several points, but all is well now. At least temporarily.

You could re-set windows and then do this when you get to the part during set up where it asks you to connect to the internet. ie don't connect to the internet, do this and set up a local account.

Shift F10 - click on command window - then type

start ms-cxh:localonly

BillM said:

I tried that with new user name and new password. Login screen shows new user name, however, new password is ineffective. I have to use ms account password to log in.

Strange. Must be something with 25H2

Click to expand...

To show more on what Hazel posted above, you can use step 15 in the tutorial below when you get to it while doing a clean install of Windows 11 to set up a local account during installation. It doesn't matter if you are connected to the Internet or not.

I used the Rufus installation method first before trying the "start ms-cxh:localonly" method. After the Rufus method most appears to be in good working order, for now, except for removing the local account password. The box "users must enter a username password" checkbox is missing. When checking issue online, I found a method to unhide this box by going to the registry. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\PasswordLess\Device. My problem is that my registry does show \Windows NT\ it only shows Windows.

FWIW: I did not to enter the Windows Key, Settings show Windows Activated. Perhaps the "Activated" has something to do with the previous install from Microsoft Windows 11.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

The key is saved on the motherboard so it should activate automatically. When I've done "start ms-cxh:localonly" method I just don't set a password. Just enter the username and when it asks for a password, just hit return. No password set. You can add one later if you want.

Many thanks to all who posted here. I got the password removed. My last build had XP installed, of course a few upgrades along the way helped my "Learning Curve". At the age of 74, change does not come easily. I started on a Honeywell with 16K of RAM, card readers and tape drives. I wlll say one thing, that Honeywell wide carriage printer was blazingly fast. Clear the memory, load the tapes, Boot 40 and hit run 2 times. It was a beautiful thing to watch.

Things have come a long way since my days of programming with BAL, Cobol, Fortran and EasyCoder.

Again, many thanks for all of the information.
Bill

BTW: I am sure more questions will follow.