One Weird Trick To Blah, Blah, Blah

There now seems to be an arms race between Microsoft and it’s users, which is a little odd considering how Microsoft actually needs users.  Redmond has been upping the ante lately, simultaneously demanding their users all upgrade to Windows 11, while making it harder and more annoying to do.  If we ever do hit the Year of Linux, it will likely be thanks to Microsoft’s unending campaign to inconvenience it’s consumer level customers.   Their newest move, earlier this week, was to disable a popular script which allowed users to set up a local account instead of needing to tie their hardware to an online Microsoft account.

Bleeping Computer have posted a new way to avoid Microsoft’s demand you set up an online account that was revealed by a Twitter user, and it’s even easier to do than the old BypassNRO registry edit.  You still hit SHIFT+F10 to bring up a CMD screen and simply enter in “start ms-cxh:localonly”.  That will pop up a “Microsoft account” window which then lets you create a local account.  Click next and you are done!  It also seems that this command is tightly integrated into Windows, likely as part of the way Enterprise users avoid this whole ridiculousness, so it should be effective for the foreseeable future.