Microsoft is plugging more holes that let you use Windows 11 without an online account
Microsoft is plugging more holes that let you use Windows 11 without an online account
Microsoft is plugging more holes that let you use Windows 11 without an online account

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.
Rufus can be used to disable account creation along with other settings.
rufus doesn't help with preloads that you don't want to or can't, for whatever reason, overwrite with a 'clean' install.
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
I’ve always done 1/1/1984 for obvious reasons but this is a good tip
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.
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.
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.
Doesnt work on these newest versions anymore.
What if they just ask your age as step 1 of the setup?
Same thing, that doesn't change anything.