More MS account madness.

MS REALLY doesn't want you to do anything but use a MS account and a PIN now.

on build 1809 or later, on the OOBE screen, you can no longer bypass the requirement for a MS account. The option is not even given to you. Te only way to even get the option is to fail to get on the internet when requested.

no only that, but if you do connect to wifi like the setup tells you to, the airplane mode hotkey is disabled until you have finished setup. so you can't disconnect.

even if you reboot to restart setup, the wifi credentials are remembered, and the connect to the internet screen is skipped. Oh it's not your router so you can't shut it off? time to take the computer to a new house to continue setup!

After doing this, you are then likely to be told "Let's create a PIN for you". if you cancel out of that, you get told that "Your account requires a Windows Hello PIN." and you are then stuck creating a PIN, and security requirements are enforced for them! (it wouldn't take 0000)

Despite what MS says, a PIN is less secure than a local account password. this is because input is terminated as soon as any pin the same number of characters as the correct one is entered. this significantly decreases the brute force search space required.

 

i tried entering fake stuff. didn't work.

didn't know about the way to open a command prompt, though. that's a valid workaround i think.

incidentally i would consider it a fair trade if the OS was actually free but required a MS account to use.

 

good to know.

of course there's still the s mode nonsense i think.