We already know that Windows 11 Home will require a Microsoft account (MSA) at the beginning of the installation process. What Microsoft hasn’t publicized is whether it’s possible to log in with just a local account. It is, but only with Windows 11 Pro.
A source close to Microsoft has now told us that the only way to avoid using an MSA is with Windows 11 Pro. According to our source, users who buy or own a PC with Windows 11 Pro may choose to use either a local account or an MSA from the very beginning of the installation process.
The Windows 11 Home MSA requirement isn’t permanent, just unavoidable. Microsoft will allow the user to transition to a local account once the Windows 11 Home installation process has completed. Retail versions of Windows 11 Home will offer the same experience.
So you’re going to need an online account to install Windows 10 Home. If, for some reason, you truly want Windows 11, I’d suggest waiting a few months and get some cheap OEM license for Windows 11 Pro from eBay for a few dollars to save yourself the hassle.
“So you’re going to need an online account to install Windows 10 Home. If, for some reason, you truly want Windows 11, I’d suggest waiting a few months and get some cheap OEM license for Windows 11 Pro from eBay for a few dollars to save yourself the hassle.”
For some people, that is very dangerous advice. Some of these “few dollars” licences are illegal and there have been cases where the police came a knocking and searched your house. Which is always bad.
( German: https://www.golem.de/news/windows-und-office-tausende-verfahren-wegen-unserioeser-microsoft-lizenzen-2103-154691.html )
Yep, always stolen. They’re most likely leaked enterprise keys. While the police knocking on your door for buying them is unlikely in most of the world, you shouldn’t rely on those keys to keep working.
Yes, this is very very poor advice, especially if beginners read it and take it on board. Often those OEM licences are hacked distros that are pre-configured to prevent validation and as a result they can’t ever be updated or upgraded. A company I worked for long ago had a manager, long before I joined, who thought he was the bee’s knees getting cheap deals on workstation licenses, Office and terminal server cals until they got raided and fined $50K for using pirated / stolen software. They got caught out because a new IT provider switched them from Netware to Exchange Server and somehow this exposed the whole situation to the piracy police.
It’s such poor advice, it should be withdrawn from the website.
We’re speaking about home users that might not run Exchange Server. But still, buy the full price license or switch to Linux, what Microsoft is obviously forcing you to.
Kochise,
Yeah, everyone here is right, people should be paying for what they use. On the other hand though microsoft owes millions of linux users a refund over the highly unethical “windows tax”. It bugs the hell out of me that microsoft includes linux owners in it’s sales numbers when we’re forced to buy windows home or pro for a computer that will run linux. Regulators should have outlawed these coercive sales in the 90s and 00s when microsoft was found to be guilty of forcing vendors to bundle windows.
https://www.theregister.com/2000/11/28/ms_its_nearly_illegal/
Today there’s a bit more choice, particularly with servers, but it’s still happening an awful lot in the consumer space with forced “windows 10 home” sales. And thanks to the long term parts shortage, sometimes the only way to avoid today’s scalpers is to buy a prebuilt system with a windows license.
BTW even if I were a windows user, I’d still be pissed off at this unethical scheme because I’d rather buy the retail version of windows once instead of having to purchase the OEM version over and over again.
Alfman,
I used to be bothered by the “Windows tax” as well. But at least for the cheap “home” variants, while the practice of a pre-installed OS with bundled crapware stays unethical – it turns out that we don’t have to worry about it when throwing that away and installing Linux instead. We don’t pay anything for that Windows.
“You don’t understand. This doesn’t cost us money. The preinstalled software on a PC is a substantial source of revenue.”
https://lwn.net/Articles/535111/
cato_minor,
It’s cheaper with scales of economy, but I think he’s exaggerating. It’s not free. For example I bought a computer from cyberpowerpc a couple years ago and they gave the choice: with a windows license for $70 (about 35% off the cost of buying windows seperately), or no OS for $0. Microsoft got to them and now they force customers to buy windows licenses that we don’t want or need. This sucks for a plethora of reasons: 1) it deprives us of choice, 2) it adds costs, 3) we end up subsidizing microsoft’s war machine against on our own FOSS platforms, 4) it skews marketshare figures in favor of windows (linux users add to the windows tally),
I know it’s futile to complain about it and that we’re too niche to have a significant influence on the market, but even so I’m disappointed that regulators haven’t outlawed coercive OS sales.
…..21 years ago
It doesn’t mean you can’t login without an Internet connection. That’s sowing FUD.
It means your account will be an email/online linked account. The limitation is that you can’t create an account that isn’t linked to an email. A more genuine comparison is on an android phone you have to create a Google account you can log on and use your phone with your (online linked) Google account even when you have no data connection but you can’t create an unlinked user.
Last android device I set up, there was still the option to skip setting up a Google Account though.
Which then becomes next to useless.
Using a microsoft account has many benefits. No reason not to.
MIcrosoft should just disable internet for local accounts, people might be happy then.
@Carrot007 –
Android devices are hardly useless without Google accounts. I’ve plenty that have no Google account but are used with sideloaded apps or aftermarket/third party services.
As for signing into an MS account – you may not have a reason to, but other people might.
For starters – one may not want one’s computer to phone home to microsoft. At all.
One may wish to not be tied to an ongoing T&C agreement to use their own computer.
One may be even banned from having an MS account.
One may wish to use software or services that rely on a local account.
One may want to use an alternative authentication package.
One may wish to be using the device more as an appliance.
There’s a big difference, legally and practically, between a product that is purchased (or licensed once on a perpetual basis) and a service that requires an ongoing, one-sided agreement and enforcement.
By making an MS account a condition of use, they tie the entire computer to a contract that’s not available at time of purchase, and may be changed at any time – even between purchase and power-on of the computer.
That contract can also be cancelled at any time by MS.
And yes – given the requirement for Secure Boot – I do mean they tie the use of the *entire computer* to it.
> For starters – one may not want one’s computer to phone home to microsoft. At all.
Back to the no internet option or not using a microsoft OS. Those are the only choices.
> As for signing into an MS account – you may not have a reason to, but other people might.
I would like to hear a reasonable reason for not having one. I suspect there are not many. And those I can think of, again these people should not be using a microsoft OS.
>One may wish to use software or services that rely on a local account.
Do tell me of any. I suspect it’s 0 again.
> One may wish to be using the device more as an appliance.
So use an appropriate OS.
It just come down to tantrum, tantrum, I want to be different. But I still want to use that OS, and I should be allowed to use it how I want to. Do these people also drive on the wrong side of the road? I hope so!
@Carrot007
You don’t get to throw other peoples self-autonomy and rights under the bus. Jog on.
Carrot007,
That is a contrived limitation that makes no sense though. People have tons of reasons to use windows that don’t require signing up for a microsoft account. And many would prefer that microsoft didn’t track them. Obviously it’s easy to see why microsoft is keen on using their windows monopoly to coerce users into microsoft’s online services, but the vast majority of users are fine with windows just being an operating system.
Not everyone wants their computers tethered to a service provider, particularly one flirting with data mining and advertisers. They just want a plain operating system and nothing more.
Your hypocrisy is really quite something. Nobody has told you that you cannot use a microsoft account, you are the one defending customers not having a right to opt-out. Why shouldn’t they be allowed to use the OS how they want to?
@Carrot007
Honestly at this point I suspect you’re trolling. I’ll make one last try to be reasonable though.
Microsoft may (not does – may) have the right to require an MS account to use Windows, but we also have the right as consumers (and in some cases – people making deployment and purchasing decisions for larger customers) to criticize MS’s choices, point out issues with them, convince others of the issues (and provide additional reasons) and thereby contribute to the pushback against them. That may help achieve the goal of MS changing their mind.
There is precedent for this – Kinect and DRM requirements in a prior XBox release for example.
I note you didn’t address the issue with the difference between licensing the software, and having an ongoing contract to use a service.
As for the reason I made the “may” clear earlier – given Microsoft still holds an effective monopoly on desktop operating systems (MacOS apparently being in the single digit percentages and Linux in the decimal points), any bundling and cross-product contractual requirements should be examined closely by local regulatory authorities and such examinations may result in MS being required to provide opt-outs for services (the EU has several times imposed such requirements).
>One may wish to use software or services that rely on a local account.
If you’ve spent any time working with Windows 10 then you’ll realize that Microsoft Account backed accounts function fundamentally differently to local accounts (there’s also a kind of hybrid local/MS account that can be created too which functions differently again).
For confidentiality reasons I’m not going to go into specifics, but those behaviour differences can cause software to break. Some things are indeed only actually possible with a local account due to the differences in behaviour.
A telling point here is that there are a number of internal local users that Windows itself uses to function (both explicitly visible in various user management tools and hidden ones)
Given Windows 11 is basically just a UI update to Windows 10, there’s no reason to think that would have changed.
I will add to the pile here – there’s a problem with MS requiring Pro for local (or domain, or O365) accounts, but MS not making Pro based products easily available through retail supply chains.
When lockdowns started here, many users had to source tablets/laptops locally because there wasn’t time or available stock to mass-supply users with equipment within the notice periods involved. That meant many users were going to the local electronics appliance retailer and buying Surface tablets etc. None of the Microsoft branded products and few of the third party ones were available, at retail, with Pro versions of Windows. They were reserved for the “enterprise” supply chain (this appears to still be the case, even).
Given these were meant to be added to corporate networks, and paid for by companies, users had to sign them on with their personal microsoft accounts (possibly requiring users to create them in the process), then try to upgrade them to Pro (which in most cases resulted in a Windows Pro license tied to that users’ personal account) , before they could be reconfigured for use with the company systems…
Once again, no reason to expect a change with W11.
>I would like to hear a reasonable reason for not having one.
I would like to hear a reasonable reason for requiring one.
Everything such an account provides is optional and unnecessary.
>So use an appropriate OS.
Windows *is* the appropriate OS when that’s what the software was written for.
> Do these people also drive on the wrong side of the road? I hope so!
You realize what side of the road people drive on is a function of law, in most developed countries, such law is the result of a democratic process which inherently involves the participation of all, and can be changed if there’s sufficient public desire to do so – a process that starts with discussions, complaints, and laying out of pros and cons…
License key is a license key is a license key. It doesn’t come with software and definitely not a hacked version of Windows. It will validate online — although sometimes I hear news that a handful of keys get revoked afterwards. Usually these keys are scagenved from discarded computers that didn’t get sold for some reason. They aren’t stolen per se.
sj87,
I’ve mostly stopped using windows, so I won’t comment on recent versions of windows. However in earlier versions of windows (ie 7 and earlier) legitimate license keys from one machine would not necessarily activate on another. You would have to call the number to explain your case to microsoft and they would decide whether to allow you to activate your legitimate license key. Legitimate keys do not necessarily work if they’ve already been activated on different hardware. My requests were approved every time I called, but I never tested whether they would allow more extreme corner cases such as trying to install it on a completely new machine.
Also it’s important to note that some OEM computers have activation parameters in the BIOS itself such that the activation is approved automatically on the basis that microsoft considers the license tethered to that machine.
–Usually these keys are scagenved from discarded computers that didn’t get sold for some reason. —
Not always. Windows 10/8/8.1/7/vista/xp there is such bits of software as product key generators. Quite often generated keys will validate online at first.
–although sometimes I hear news that a handful of keys get revoked afterwards.–
Lot of cases of keys being revoked after the fact is when Microsoft wakes up they never sold the key to anyone in the first place because its a generated cryptographic-ally correct key. The software that generates these keys is normally full of malware. The other case is when its a enterprise/volume license key and the company has change their licensing with Microsoft so have got new key and the old key has been invalidated. There are cases of stolen keys or fake keys.
oiaohm,
Yeah, this has been achieved by reverse engineering and/or leaking microsoft’s algorithms in the past. I cannot confirm whether this still works with modern versions of windows, but a search for “windows key generator” suggests that it’s still possible to generate windows 10 keys. People are just going to assume that anything that activates is authentic, but to be honest I personally wouldn’t know how to tell if an ebay license is legit or fake. Maybe a fake license seller isn’t going to bother with the expense and difficulty of reproducing holographic seals? But even then these days you never know because just about anybody can buy custom holographic seals.
Manual key entry is tedious and puts a practical limit on validation key length, especially for users who have to call it in over the phone. That’s a weak point that precludes the use of stronger crypto.
Also, even without breaking the algorithm, there’s the problem of duplicating legitimate keys. Consider retail licenses that are supposed to allow owners to legitimately transfer the license from one computer to another, a seller could acquire completely legitimate keys with the intention of reselling them to multiple buyers. These might activate several times before microsoft blocks them.
Anyways the point is there’s ample opportunity for sellers to introduce unauthorized licenses into the market.
Kragil
Utter rubbish. German courts have confirmed licences can be resold. I have one spare licence I bought from a well established German supplier incorporated in Germany liable for German tax. They are not a “pop up” oepration skulking in the shadows. Within Europe it is perfectly legal to sell a licence and buy an unused licence. More accurately it is is legal in the EU single market and this carries over in the UK post Brexit. The only catch is you cannot use or distribute copyright install media you don’t have the rights to own or transfer. This is why a lot of the purchased Windows licences only come with the key not the disc as it saves a lot of administrative headaches.
Also if you are a Linux user and it bothers you so much you’re paying the Windows tax and within the EU (or UK) then you can simply sell your licence and wash your hands of it. And yes this does cover OEM licences as per the German ruling.
US jurisdiction stops at the borders of the US.
HollyB,
I think kragil was referring to the fact that a lot of ebay products are not authentic. Anyways, microsoft has two types of windows licenses, OEM copies that are intended to be tethered to a specific computer serial number and retail copies that are not tethered to the computer.
So for example:
https://www.newegg.com/p/pl?d=windows
(These may be temporarily prices due to the US holiday)
I have no idea about whether microsoft’s OEM licensing restrictions are legally enforceable around the world. Copyright law may grant user rights even if the copyright holder doesn’t acknowledge them in their license.
I’d be very interested in reading that if you’ve got a link.
Absolutely. The converse is also true too. There are provisions in the GDPR that pretend to apply to foreign jurisdictions, yet it would be completely foolish for europeans to believe that their GDPR privacy rights are protected elsewhere.
Buying surplus OEM license keys is entirely legal and accepted in at least the EU, where I’m from. It is by far the cheapest and easiest way to get a completely legal and valid Windows (or other software) license.
Thom Holwerda,
Yes we can buy them in bulk here in the US legally too, but once they’re installed, end users are not allowed to resell the OS license again (unless it’s bundled with the machine).
So my question to you (or anyone else in the know) is if you know of a law/ruling that allows you to resell the OS independently after it has been bundled with hardware?
And going further, does this law/ruling prescribe a solution to microsoft blocking your license key from working on a new owner’s hardware?
You can find OEM licenses sold with hardware like hard drives or even cheap mice just to justify the bundle. As long as you have the bill to prove it, it’s legal. For once a legal loophole serves consumers, you cannot complain.
Kochise,
It’s certainly “legal” because there’s no law against it, but it’s not clear to me that microsoft themselves consider it compliant with their license agreement. If you called them to activate a transferred OEM copy that had been sold to you along with a mouse… what are the odds their staff would authorize you to transfer the license and process the activation? I’d definitely like to here the personal anecdote of anyone who’s tried it though 🙂
“to install Windows 10 Home” : Windows 10 ?
A better user experience is not the true reason for requiring an online account and everybody here knows it whether they’re trying to play devil’s advocate or not. This is about intrusion into people’s privacy. It’s about surveillance of people’s habits and behaviors. People are nothing more than target’s in today’s world and the more data points you have on everyone the better because companies know the more they know about them, the easier it is to manipulate their lives to the company’s benefit.
People used to own & exert control over the items they purchased. Now, everything you buy comes with a built-in baby sitter and a bullshit TOS that says you agree to whatever it says and the company can change what it says whenever they like, without your consent. The “smart” devices littering our lives are smart in the sense that company’s are smart enough to realize how stupid people can be and what they’re willing to agree to as long as it gives the perception of being free or makes them feel like a junkie who just got a fix.
Even recent Windows 10 installs strongly suggest (almost require) online accounts (if you have the updated installer image). The current workaround I know is, using an online account to set up, but then adding a local one, and deleting the original (obviously less than ideal).
There are cases where online Microsoft account is useful. For example, auto login to xbox.com, hotmail.com, or other online Microsoft services. Yet, I never use OneDrive sync, and Office can login separately from the OS. So basically not 100% necessary even if you use Office 365.
On the other hand, the default options do several things I pretty much object to:
1) Share WiFi passwords
2) Store BitLocker encryption key on Microsoft servers (really?)
3) Use OneDrive folder instead of My Documents
I am not *too* paranoid about online services (I work for a cloud company after all). However I always fear that in just one Windows install I will forget to turn off the defaults, and share more than I want to.
@sukru
This is really naughty and an example of Microsoft “trying it on” along with their Windows 11 specification bump which is trying it on. There is no technical reason nor historical reason for either. It is simply policy and policy decided by Microsoft management without consulting users or caring about the consequences for end users. I’m not sure what their reasoning for this is but won’t discount it being simply for the reason of it being a power trip. They are doing it “because they can” not because of any compelling reason they can justify.
There’s a lot of pushback but journalists are not picking up on this which makes them complicit or equally reckless.
HollyB,
I have given up on most *tech journalists*. Unfortunately clicks sell, so they use as much sensation as possible. Also long and detailed articles with good editorial oversight are more expensive compared to a flashy piece written by an intern.
I subscribe to several physical magazines to help keep them alive, but even they are struggling, especially with the pandemic.
sukru,
I used to like the Tech magazines also, things like Dr Dobbs & Byte magazine, etc. I also liked when osnews had more original content, but I also know the business model for professional journalism has fallen out from under the industry. There are still some decent news sources but it’s become way too consolidated and way too much of an echo chamber. For better or worse nearly all the advertising money that used to fund professional journalism has migrated to the modern internet giants who don’t produce professional content at all and have promoted amateur social media material instead. Oh and so much click bait…how I wish google and youtube would do something to de-rank click bait content & channels that are like spam to me.
AFAIK the current Windows 10 Home installer won’t offer a local account unless you boot the OOBE/Installer without networking. Even then it’ll nag. If it figured out it can see the internet between boot and when you get to the user-setup phase, you’ll be forced to set up.
Boot without networking, and you’ll get the link to set up a local account show up.
I think MS rolled back the Wifi password sharing in more recent versions (though I am not 100% on that)
Does this mean that if you buy a new computer with Windows 11 Home pre-installed; whoever pre-installed Win11 on the computer has to have an MSA but you (the purchaser/user/owner) may not need one?
Brendan,
If you recall, even when windows comes preinstalled at the factory, windows boots up into the final stage of installation prompting the user for things like license agreement, account creation, time zones, wifi, privacy settings, etc.
Well it sounds like microsoft has eliminated the ability to create local accounts at this point and is forcing the user to use a microsoft account.initially. It will only be possible to create local accounts after the install is finished and the user has logged into the microsoft account.
Microsoft removed the UI options in the latest versions of windows 10 as well, but local accounts could still be used by disconnecting windows from the network. However it sounds like this will no longer work and that microsoft is mandating that new installs are attached to a microsoft account before installation can finish.
Thanks (I was afraid of that).
My next attempt at working around their “user coercion” would be creating a Microsoft account, finishing the install, then immediately closing/deleting the Microsoft account.
Brendan,
I’m sure that’s what everyone else is thinking also, but it kind of feels like death to our liberty by a thousand cuts.
I am reminded of this scene from star trek, where Jean-Luc Picard could have been speaking of tech corporations taking away our freedoms:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ms_WY0s_1XM
A lesser known feature about logging in with your Microsoft account is that the Windows activation is tied to your account. Need to reinstall Windows 10? Just login to your account after installing and it’s automatically activated. Literally no more hassling with activation anymore. You can complain about the other issues, but this was by far one of the biggest problems whenever someone reinstalled Windows.
Most major OEM machines / laptops come with BIOS embedded keys, and it’s even easier, nothing to do, no need for logging in.
Giving up privacy for convenience is how we end up in this mess…
Consider how many times this has actually inconvenienced the average user versus how many times it has benefited them. For the the vast majority of people it’s a 0:3 or 0:4 ratio of times they found it inconvenient to times it was tied to a helpful feature like syncing their sticky notes across computers. It’s an easy to complain about thing, but the practicality of complaining about it is questionable for most people.
dark2,
I’m not sure I follow follow your logic, The average person has never re-installed windows even once. But the average person has lost a lot of privacy over time. So IMHO “stereotype” may have a valid point.
I’m not saying nobody benefits from having a microsoft account, some people may want one and it’s fine if they do. But I am saying the whole motivation for making it compulsory and denying owners a choice is microsoft doing it for selfish reasons.
I have one Windows 10 update preview as an optional download. In the meantime a second update preview decided to come along and install itself requiring a restart. I am not interested in installing previews which are feature only updates and may contain bugs so why did this happen?
The fact Microsoft still hasn’t managed to fix its own update software while they are busy not only trying to ram Windows 11 down peoples throats but in the process throw perfectly servicable hardware on the scrapheap really isn’t on. Could Microsoft get the basics done right first before they start trying to get clever?
Maybe sacking their quality assurance teams and technical writer teams wasn’t such a good idea?