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  • 7 months

    Here’s your bypass:

    In OOBE, go through MS account creation. Tell it you were born today. It’ll let you set a password for the MS account before rejecting you due to COPA requirements. At this point, you can make an offline account without having even created an MS account, let alone having to use one.

    This will not go away - it’s a legal thing. MS doesn’t want to deal with COPA stuff for very young kids, so this flow exists. Enjoy.

      • 7 months

        rufus doesn’t help with preloads that you don’t want to or can’t, for whatever reason, overwrite with a ‘clean’ install.

          • 7 months

            There are plenty that will boot/install Linux just fine but won’t do a nice clean install of Windows 11.

            Modern Thinkpad E16 (AMD) is one of them, a clean USB won’t work, it will always stick at not finding required drivers.

            You need to inevitably create a USB install from the MS USB Media Creation tool, running on the machine itself from the included crapware Windows - to get an installer USB that will work.

            Different if you’re just pushing a wim over the network from endpoint/scm, but it’s basically broken for local users.

            • I had this issue at work, I was able to fix it by using the windows media creation tool instead of just writing the iso to the drive. Not sure why that worked, but it has every time so far.

              • 7 months

                Only if you want to run Windows on that model I guess. My kid has an E16 AMD and installed Fedora Linux from a USB no problem.

              • I would still get a ThinkPad, but then, I would never be putting Windows on it anyway.

            • Do you have more info regarding that ThinkPad E16?
              I’m mostly working with T series laptops and haven’t had the problem, but always good to know if or when an E16 shows up.

              • 7 months

                Usually all ThinkPads work mostly the same regarding Linux support (bar the usual Nvidia driver shenanigans if you ever trip that), but I’d be concerned about the E-series themselves. If you want a cheaper than T-series ThinkPad you should get an L-series one. Not as expensive as the T-ones, but still retains some usable chassis durability, double replaceable memory slots, replaceable keyboard, etc.
                I’ve started calling the E-series as E-waste.

            • Just install it in a VM. I’ve done this before to force Windows 10 to install on a USB stick, you can pass a VM an entire physical drive to use instead of a virtual hard disk and install to that SSD directly from the VM (just kill the VM and reboot into the windows partition when the VM tries to reboot to the windows installation). I’m sure if you passed the VM a USB created with Rufus you could install from that as well.

    • 7 months

      This is the rule for any account or mobile game, too - if it asks your age before asking for consent to farm, put any age below 13. It’ll either not farm you because it’s illegal or it’ll kick you out. If the latter, good riddance really

    • 7 months

      If that actually becomes a thing people do, that could prompt MS to start to require either submitting to a face scan or showing some government ID just to install Windows, though, if the way Google’s handling KYC on YT if your account gets flagged as underage, and soon Android app dev, as well as KYC going out across other sites, is any indication.

      I’m pretty sure having to KYC just to install an OS is the last thing people want right now.

      • 7 months

        Let them. The entire world is slowly migrating to Mac and Linux. I haven’t even had the option of windows at my last 3 jobs. (To be fair, I’ve never had the option of desktop Linux, but this last one said pick a computer—I’m not positive that they would’ve balked at Linux.) That said, idk what’s so great about Mac over Linux, but I guess it’s not corporate friendly.

        I’m trying to think of which MS products we even have in our ecosystem. Office, I guess. Corporate world will never wean themselves off of Excel.

        • The entire world is slowly migrating to Mac and Linux.

          have a look at the steam hardware survey results or basically any other statistics and see that it’s not the case.

    • 7 months

      Back in my day, we had to make ourselves looks older online to get things, not younger! hehe

    • My go to is to pop open the console and run “ipconfig /release” right before you create an account. Win 11 will have you set up a local account if you don’t have a network connection.

        • OOBE\BYPASSNRO has been off and on for me, but so far nuking the network connection has always worked for me. I’m setting up a few new computers tomorrow, it will be interesting to see what tricks still work.

          • 7 months

            Yes please let us know. Wont know till we order another batch of newer computers in a few weeks.

            I guess i could download the latest test build on a test machine and reset it and try.

            • Inconclusive. Re-used machines instead of new computers. Systems did have Windows 11 on them. OOBE\BypassNRO worked, but they may have pending updates.

              Edit: one machine would not let me skip MS account sign in with OOBE\BypassNRO. IPConfig /Release immediately let me set up a local account.

              • 7 months

                Do you normally connect your machines to the internet during setup? Or is this solely without any connection?

                • Avoid it like the plague. Once you admit you have Internet, Microsoft never forgets.