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points by kencausey 4 days ago | 0 comments

I would appreciate a link to the details about 'setting a flag.' The last version of that I used earlier this year stopped working in recent months, and I believe I saw tech news stories to the effect that Microsoft had intentionally closed that path.

For now I just use a customer-supplied email address which I used to setup a Microsoft account, setup Windows and use that account, immediately create a local-only 'admin' account with full rights, delete the online associated account, and start creating user account(s) from there.

[–] O_H_E 4 days ago

I had recently had to install windows for the first time in years, did some chatting with mr gpt and poking around on reddit until I arrived at: https://massgrave.dev. They guide you on how to download windows LTSC from the "official" Microsoft links. So much less crap shoved down the system, it's kind of nice.

[–] frankacter 4 days ago

Great point. It is the ONLY way I would use Windows on my computers. I just use the media builder from Microsoft directly:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows11

There are also community projects like NTLite ( https://ntlite.com/ ) and Windows ISO Debloater ( https://github.com/itsNileshHere/Windows-ISO-Debloater ) for the more technically advanced that want full control to prevent the bloat from even making it to your machine during installation at all (instead of having to clean it up after the fact)

[–] frankacter 4 days ago

I just recently had to install Windows 11 fresh on a computer and this is what I used

https://rtech.support/guides/bypass-11/

I have a Microsoft account, but I prefer to use a local account to avoid a lot of the "value add" that comes from using the Microsoft account.