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Microsoft has removed the “use offline account” option when installing Windows

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Re: Microsoft has removed the “use offline account” option when installing Windows

#491

Post by Kuinox »

mastazi wrote: post #63

This is incredibly bad. In general I have a positive opinion about what MS is doing lately, but Windows is a glaring exception, it’s getting worse and worse at an alarming rate. In the last two months we had two consecutive updates that broke basic functionality for users who disabled web results in Windows Search (which is a very common setting among those who care about privacy) https://www.zdnet.com/article/window…

They didn't removed it. The title is misleading, The button is still there, but they renamed the button. It's under "Domain Join Instead" https://i.imgur.com/tA9fo1R.png And there you can create an offline account: https://i.imgur.com/eBLi5cv.png

Re: Microsoft has removed the “use offline account” option when installing Windows

#492

Post by wayneftw »

Kuinox wrote: post #491
mastazi wrote: post #63

This is incredibly bad. In general I have a positive opinion about what MS is doing lately, but Windows is a glaring exception, it’s getting worse and worse at an alarming rate. In the last two months we had two consecutive updates that broke basic functionality for users who disabled web results in Windows Search (which is a very common setting among those who care about privacy) https://www.zdnet.com/article/window…

They didn't removed it. The title is misleading, The button is still there, but they renamed the button. It's under "Domain Join Instead" https://i.imgur.com/tA9fo1R.png And there you can create an offline account: https://i.imgur.com/eBLi5cv.png

My initial thought was that they completely removed the option only in the Home version of Windows.

Since (I don't think) you can join Windows Home to a Domain, is that true? Is the option for a local account now only available in Windows Pro, unless you install Windows Home disconnected from the Internet?

Re: Microsoft has removed the “use offline account” option when installing Windows

#493

Post by GVIrish »

CRConrad wrote: post #438
GlenTheMachine wrote: post #100

...and from what I can tell, their online account security is craptastic. Here’s a true story that happened to my family. My son is the only person in the house who uses Windows. For his game machine. He set up a Microsoft online account. It got hacked - someone set up a fake family and managed to get my son’s account listed under it as a child. As a consequence, he couldn’t install any new software. I’m not sure wha…

Several people here have talked about “hacks” like what happened to ypur son, and I'm of course not saying they're wrong. I don't quite get the idea what it's supposed to get such hackers, though, so I think you shouldn't rule out sheer incompetence: Maybe someone else has a family member with the same or a similar name and was trying to add rhem, and a search threw up your son's name and they added him by mistake? S…

As a sibling comment said, some people are griefers who only seek to inconvenience or otherwise harass others. Particularly with online games.

Re: Microsoft has removed the “use offline account” option when installing Windows

#494

Post by yyyk »

I can't see what on earth can MS gain from making this change. What does Microsoft gain from users having a "Microsoft account"?

If they go to a services model their Windows marketshare will plummet. As soon as users have to directly pay a monthly fee, all the Linux UX issues will seem meaningless.

Re: Microsoft has removed the “use offline account” option when installing Windows

#495

Post by eatonphil »

Tangent: I've been running Windows 10 on my work laptop since January 2019 and I use the PIN feature for login. Every so often I'll try to enter my PIN to log in and it says something along the lines of "your pin is not available". What on earth does that mean? The messaging is absurd and gives me no indication of what to do. I don't believe it's directly related to network availability because I'll retry again in a few minutes and it is still unavailable. The only reliable means to get around this is to reboot or enter my full username and password by typing 60 characters in from 1Password on my phone.

Re: Microsoft has removed the “use offline account” option when installing Windows

#496

Post by mwheeldown »

eatonphil wrote: post #495

Tangent: I've been running Windows 10 on my work laptop since January 2019 and I use the PIN feature for login. Every so often I'll try to enter my PIN to log in and it says something along the lines of "your pin is not available". What on earth does that mean? The messaging is absurd and gives me no indication of what to do. I don't believe it's directly related to network availability because I'll retry again in a…

TPM-chip acting up somehow maybe?

Re: Microsoft has removed the “use offline account” option when installing Windows

#497

Post by Krasnol »

Kuinox wrote: post #491
mastazi wrote: post #63

This is incredibly bad. In general I have a positive opinion about what MS is doing lately, but Windows is a glaring exception, it’s getting worse and worse at an alarming rate. In the last two months we had two consecutive updates that broke basic functionality for users who disabled web results in Windows Search (which is a very common setting among those who care about privacy) https://www.zdnet.com/article/window…

They didn't removed it. The title is misleading, The button is still there, but they renamed the button. It's under "Domain Join Instead" https://i.imgur.com/tA9fo1R.png And there you can create an offline account: https://i.imgur.com/eBLi5cv.png

Nice...no normal user would click that.

This is terrible.

Re: Microsoft has removed the “use offline account” option when installing Windows

#498

Post by GordonS »

userbinator wrote: post #120
xeeeeeeeeeeenu wrote: post #41

I don't understand why so many people on HN praise Satya Nadella. I guess good PR is worth much more than actions. Before Nadella, Windows wasn't nearly as user-hostile as it is now. There was no mandatory telemetry, there were no forced updates, end users weren't treated as betatesters and QA wasn't non-existent. And now they are taking away the ability to use Windows without Microsoft Account. Of course there are a…

there were no forced updates I have attempted to disable those "for real", and the lengths that MS has gone to in an attempt to stop people from doing it is extremely disturbing; there's half a dozen different services and scheduled tasks with various names which are involved, and if you don't disable all of it quickly, it all comes back . This Hydra-like persistence is something that hitherto was only seen in malwar…

I have Enterprise on one machine, Pro on another. I don't recall ever having a reboot forced, but sometimes they make it really annoying, popping up a "please restart now to apply updates!" message multiple times a day - I'd really like a "remind me in x days" option for these notifications.

Re: Microsoft has removed the “use offline account” option when installing Windows

#499

Post by temac »

kyberias wrote: post #387
klingonopera wrote: post #101

As someone who uses Windows for industrial PCs, I'm pretty appalled. We've been hanging on to Windows 7, including side-loading drivers into the installation image for modern hardware, because this kind of stuff that Windows 10 does is in these cases simply unacceptable (random tip: Go for AMD, their Windows 7 support is way better than Intel, do not use Intel chipset series 300). I can't have PCs bogged down downloa…

You should use the appropriate edition of Windows 10 for your use case: Windows 10 IoT Enterprise. You can disable all the updates and everything you want.

Technically, maybe. Commercially, the licensing is a huge mess. In some areas with low volumes you certainly don't want (or maybe MS won't even sell to you under reasonable terms) to deal with that. Even with medium/high volume I would find it nightmare.

Re: Microsoft has removed the “use offline account” option when installing Windows

#500

Post by xoap »

benhurmarcel wrote: post #460
m0zg wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> getting worse and worse at an alarming rate That's because Windows Division does not exist anymore as a separate business unit within MS. It's now a part of Azure. And Azure doesn't really care all that much about making desktop excellent. It'll just keep it good enough for you to buy more Azure, but not more than that.

What is the reasoning behind that? Putting a major desktop product as part of the cloud organization seems a bit ridiculous from afar.

In these situations there usually is no actual logical reason.

The corporate "reason" is that a new CEO must be seen implementing dramatic changes (activity > progress).

In this case I'm not sure if Satya the Saint [tm] started this roadmap, but for sure he managed to associate himself with it and take credit for it.

As others said, a new CEO can easily reverse the whole process in order to have a "new" little triumph.

It is all meaningless...

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