Monday, July 1st 2024
Microsoft Closer to Removing Local Accounts from Windows 11, Removes Help Page on How to Switch to One
Microsoft really wants you to use Windows 11 with an online Microsoft Account. This lets the operating system integrate the single login for Microsoft Store, all the apps on it, Office or 365, Teams, OneDrive, Outlook, and more importantly, put a face to your name (making you and your machine identifiable to it). Some users, particularly power-users, tend to avoid this, by preferring local accounts—an account that's authenticated and maintained locally by the machine. Microsoft is viewed as making it increasingly difficult for users to create local accounts, particularly on the client versions of Windows, such as Windows 11 Home and Windows 11 Pro.
The Windows Setup by default flows you into creating a Microsoft Account, or logging in from one. Over the past several versions of Windows, Microsoft has made it harder, if not impossible, to create a local account during Setup. In what could be a step closer by the company to wean the market off local accounts, Microsoft removed the online Help page that guides users on how to switch from a Microsoft Account to a local one, as Tweaktown found out. The publication dug the page out using the Wayback Machine. Will Microsoft completely remove the ability to create local accounts? We don't know. All versions of Windows 11 and Windows 10 sit on the Windows NT architecture, which requires some form of local accounts. The Microsoft Account itself is layered on top of a local account. So, the ability to create a local account shouldn't go away for those who really want one, but it will be close to impossible for the vast majority of users trained by Google and Apple to have online accounts on their phones.
Source:
Tweaktown
The Windows Setup by default flows you into creating a Microsoft Account, or logging in from one. Over the past several versions of Windows, Microsoft has made it harder, if not impossible, to create a local account during Setup. In what could be a step closer by the company to wean the market off local accounts, Microsoft removed the online Help page that guides users on how to switch from a Microsoft Account to a local one, as Tweaktown found out. The publication dug the page out using the Wayback Machine. Will Microsoft completely remove the ability to create local accounts? We don't know. All versions of Windows 11 and Windows 10 sit on the Windows NT architecture, which requires some form of local accounts. The Microsoft Account itself is layered on top of a local account. So, the ability to create a local account shouldn't go away for those who really want one, but it will be close to impossible for the vast majority of users trained by Google and Apple to have online accounts on their phones.
121 Comments on Microsoft Closer to Removing Local Accounts from Windows 11, Removes Help Page on How to Switch to One
There's also the psychological factor - someone still running an older 'insecure' OS is often likely to be more vigilant and disable Server service / SMB, switch Windows Firewall to a whitelist, etc. It's the casual W11 users who often get sucked into a complacent "I'm running W11 and just updated so I have perfect security" whilst continuing to run Windows Firewall in default blacklist-only mode that happily lets anything and everything make outgoing connections, sit there with Remote Desktop Configuration, Remote Desktop Services, Remote Desktop Services UserMode Port Redirector, Remote Registry, Secondary Login, etc, services all still enabled by default on their 'secure' OS... ;)
1) Newer hardware Windows 11 does not have driver for it like LAN, WIFI Etc.
Which is why have to install using a local account first than install all the necessary driver
before connecting to Internet.
2)When PC crashes or corrupted, when you use local account you still have a chance
the files are there on the PC. If use MS account to log in, these files might be
sync using OneDrive.
What if you never sync these files, they are lost when the Windows cannot start.
Pros and cons but to remove local account which has not been practice since early days of Windows is dumb.
No worries, the FOSS community will finally stop bickering amongst themselves and realize what everyone sane had a while ago - they should stop the ridiculous fragmentation and endless forking and try to actually make a one-stop-shop Linux that could actually attract normies, be hassle free and come as a finished product. It can even be commercial, imagine that. That will surely happen aaaaaaaany second now. I mean, with Microsoft making such self-sabotaging moves, it surely is an opportunity, right? R-right? Oh… right. It’s the FOSS community.
This came up in a recent video where they run out of options to create a user account and what I based my previous comments on.
The only option they found was to create a business account not a personal one.
Doom 1-2, Heretic, Hexen & Strife = GZDoom
Quake 1 = vkQuake, Quake 2 = vkQuake2
Diablo = DevilutionX
Jagged Alliance 2 = JAStracciatella
Build Engine games (Duke Nukem, Blood, Shadow Warrior, etc) = Raze
Elder Scrolls 2 Daggerfall = Daggerfall Unity
Elder Scrolls 3 Morrowind = OpenMW
DOS games usually work very well under DOSBox / ScummVM
Others have had "Enhanced" / Remastered releases (eg, Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, Neverwinter Nights, Planescape Torment, Day of the Tentacle, Full Throttle, Grim Fandango) that added a Linux version. So quite a lot of pre-2004 games can be made to work in Linux (even "natively") surprising well.I just put it down to PPE (Post-Peak Ensh*tification). Closed source has one advantage in being more focussed during its early lifespan and not getting fragmented. Later on though, when it runs out of ways to improve naturally and becomes a "mature product" (like DVD players, refridgerators, etc) all are, it's hard to keep reselling "updates" every couple of years, so the focus is on 'rental services' or just mindlessly changing things to look like they're doing something for the sake of ludicrously unsustainable "infinity growth" investor demands. Conversely, Open Source is often more prone to getting forked / fragmented / reinventing the wheel during its early lifespan, but once it matures it can stay at peak without turning itself into rentware junk or "what people actually want" being held hostage by investors.
With Microsoft Intune, they're making said account obsolete anyway, enrollment is done with hardware hashes.MS, like most fortune 500 companies, figured out their consumer base is mostly made up of sheep easily led to slaughter, or captive audiences that depend on their product. So moves like this, to exert more control, are pure profit for MS.
They DO hate their customers. most companies do. You are a walking wallet, your opinions do not matter.
And it's led them to over a $3 TRILLION market value.Monopoly: "the exclusive possession or control of the supply of or trade in a commodity or service."
Microsoft doesnt have this. Mac OS exists, Linux exists, and chromeOS exists. And with microsoft dipping below 70% marketshare, its become obvious that they're in the process of losing the majority, let alone the dominant position.
For microsoft to be worried about their dominance in the OS market is justified. However, pissing off the target user base by trying to force them into something they don't want is an absolutely great way to LOOSE customers. The idiots in the microsoft marketing dept need to pull their heads out from where the Sun doesn't shine.
Course it is. Never argued that. But people who are content with an Android tablet or phablet (or Chromebook, I suppose) as a main computer device are the same people who would not give a toss about current MS shenanigans. They probably already have a MS account for one reason or another. We’re discussing this nonsense from the big boy club perspective, we’re people who cannot replace a full-fat PC as a main device, aren’t we?
That might have been true, but the great mobile exodus for the masses started a while ago, before Win 11 with its requirements was even announced. Apart from those, the requirement (or rather insisted recommendation) before was just the MS account. And making new accounts is something an average user does easily all the time without much hassle. You say all my settings will be saved and transferred if I buy a new PC? Cool! That’s another thing to remember - average consumer just buys a new PC, a laptop most often. It usually is already set up to go and he has no real interaction with MS new requirements. He doesn’t even know what TPM is, Safe Boot is probably a car accessory and POPCNT is an exotic soda.
One easy example is ransomware protection. GL with that on XP, or getting that through third party app functionality in an unsupported OS.
Its just worse in every possible way, and if that's better in your mind than MS doing 'keylogging' and 'reading your emails'... yeah, to each their own. You're saying its better to not know who's keylogging you and getting info out of your stash than it is to actually know it (MS), that's straight up crazy talk to me, honestly. Not in the least because you could hold MS accountable, but you can't do that with a criminal you'll never identify.
Just get a present day Linux then and let Windows go, you just can't have your cake and eat it too. What's done is done.They're still dominant and they will remain so for at least another decade, there is no question about it. The slow bleeding of % isn't really doing anything to their position in enterprise. One big consideration is also the increase in business / IT outside of the West, notably in China etc. where they are hard at work implementing their own OS'es (% Unknown) or at the very least phase out Microsoft services because its a US company. So yeah, quantify what they're really losing here, as far as I am concerned MS is still the dominant party and OSX will never surpass them, nor anything Android based.
And for those who continue to mention Linux? No. Linux is great for many things, but it is still no replacement for Windows. It's much closer than it once was, but it's not there yet.