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How does Windows decide whether your computer has full Internet access?

devblogs.microsoft.com

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Re: How does Windows decide whether your computer has full Internet access?

#131
post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was becoming common knowledge that you could disconnect your machine from networks during installation to use Windows with a local account (i.e. the normal kind of user account that people have used for decades). Microsoft wants people to register online during installation and to use the online account on all their computers, in order to increase the market share of the Windows app store and other Microsoft onlin…

I mean, sorry, but I consider that malicious. The OS can create a local account but doesn't give you that option specifically to make you create a windows Live account. That is almost textbook definition of malicious for me.

What's may be more surprising than their malice is your surprise at their malice. These 'dark patterns' are so numerous now it's exhausting to remain duly outraged. I hope there's a future (or alternate universe) where dark patterns, such as this, result in economic loss rather than economic gain.

Re: How does Windows decide whether your computer has full Internet access?

#132
post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What explanation other than malice is there for Microsoft not giving you that button all the time?

It was becoming common knowledge that you could disconnect your machine from networks during installation to use Windows with a local account (i.e. the normal kind of user account that people have used for decades). Microsoft wants people to register online during installation and to use the online account on all their computers, in order to increase the market share of the Windows app store and other Microsoft onlin…

    - This is My procedure (with Lan) to obtain a local Account on W10
     
    Install Windows 10 and go through the OOBE
  - Select Region
  - Select Keyboard Layout
  - SKIP Secondary keyboard layout
  - Network connection
  - ENABLE Allow PC to be discoverable
  - Setup = For personal use
  - Account = Offline account
    - like old times - a completely standalone PC
  - Sign in = Limited experience
    - ignore the nudging to make an online account
  - User account = 
    - as this gets used for the name of the home folder and I don't want my full name for that
  - No password
    - to avoid the nonsense socalled "security questions". Password will be set later *after* completing the installation
  - Location usage = No
  - Find my device = No
  - Diagnostic data = Required only
  - Improve inking = No
  - Tailored experience = No
  - Advertising ID = No
  - Customise experience = Skip
  - Set a password for the account

Re: How does Windows decide whether your computer has full Internet access?

#133

Doing this during a Windows 11 install will result in a road block until you fix said connection issues. You literally can't proceed without finding a hidden terminal and disabling the process and restarting. Insane.

Windows experience is worse and worse. On my Windows 10 company provided PC I found games installed remotely. In a professional PC! A friend of mine found Spotify installed [1]. That's insane. [1] https://www.windowslatest.com/2022/09/28/spotify-app-is-auto...

I’m not saying it makes it okay, but the “Professional for Workstations” edition does not have any sort of sponsored start menu items or auto-installs.

Re: How does Windows decide whether your computer has full Internet access?

#134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why I refuse to update or upgrade Windows or my iPhone. They just keep over-engineering stuff and somehow it's always worse.

GPT3 gone bad?

Yes Twisell, opinions not yours is a rogue AI.

Re: How does Windows decide whether your computer has full Internet access?

#135
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. The full instructions can be found online but in general, When you get to that step, press Shift + F10 to bring up the terminal, then type "OOBE\BYPASSNRO" and press enter. The installer will restart but this time will have a "I don't have Internet" button that you can use to bypass this nonsense.

This is also currently the only way to bypass the need for an MS account when setting up a new PC.

You can also try to join a domain, enter bad credentials, wait for the error to show up, and then select a local account I believe. That may not be available in the home edition of Windows 11, though.

Re: How does Windows decide whether your computer has full Internet access?

#136

Anyone here who can explain how to force Hyper-V to use a specific network adapter for the default switch? I like that one because it provides NAT + DHCP, creating another switch doesn't.

You can manually configure the network adapters from the Hyper-V UI. I don't know if you can set a priority order, but you can definitely configure the interface Hyper-V uses for VM network connectivity.

Re: How does Windows decide whether your computer has full Internet access?

#137
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you want to block windows updates?

It's standard practice. You don't roll out updates until they are tested.

Would you like to describe your standard practice? I am interested in implementing this after windows updates have killed our workstations multiple times.

Is there a nice description / workflow / tutorial / script / community where I can learn how to do that?

I did not find any recommended workflow for this by Microsoft itself, but maybe I was searching for the wrong things - windows updates are generally a bad thing to research anything related for. I expected to find some standard workflow description plus tools on some MS website, but no success. Does that exist?

Thank you very much!

Re: How does Windows decide whether your computer has full Internet access?

#138

What if your ISP hijacks your DNS (pretty common) and someone was to poison it and instead downloads a malware ? That would mean thousands of windows pcs download this malware by just connecting to the internet.

Then the string compare would fail and the little icon in the bottom right would show an exclamation mark.

This can be a problem if there's some kind of critical vulnerability in the Microsoft HTTP stack, but I don't think this attack vector is all that relevant.

Same with other captive portal detection endpoints, there's very little actual parsing going on with these requests.

Re: How does Windows decide whether your computer has full Internet access?

#139
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. The full instructions can be found online but in general, When you get to that step, press Shift + F10 to bring up the terminal, then type "OOBE\BYPASSNRO" and press enter. The installer will restart but this time will have a "I don't have Internet" button that you can use to bypass this nonsense.

This is also currently the only way to bypass the need for an MS account when setting up a new PC.

Nope - see my previous answer in this thread ;-)

Re: How does Windows decide whether your computer has full Internet access?

#140

What if your ISP hijacks your DNS (pretty common) and someone was to poison it and instead downloads a malware ? That would mean thousands of windows pcs download this malware by just connecting to the internet.

Yep, that's how viruses spread kids. Better install some McAffee.
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