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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

#521

Post by kyberias »

temac wrote: post #499
kyberias wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's not a mess. Windows 10 IoT Enterprise has a price-tag. I'm involved in a low-volume system and it's not a nightmare.

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

#522

Post by mastazi »

moontear wrote: post #455
currysausage wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I keep hearing about this. This is what’s keeping me from upgrading to 1903, as I find disabling Bing Search absolutely essential. So, have you followed the advice in the support document? Did it help?

So far, no. I have reset search index, reindexed and tried the PowerShell commands from the KB article. Search in Windows Explorer works just fine - only Start menu doesn’t. Troubleshooter says incorrect permissions for search directories but I haven’t fiddled with those. Tried repairing permissions and giving everyone permission but doesn’t help :-(

What worked for me was uninstalling the September cumulative update and the August cumulative update[1], then flagging those two to avoid that they get reinstalled the next time Windows updates[2].

[1] https://www.windowscentral.com/how-fix-start-menu-and-search...

[2] https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/3183922/how-to-temp...

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

#523

Post by jug »

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

Weird location because local user accounts have little to do with domains. :P

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

#524

Post by MrStonedOne »

wvenable wrote: post #196
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…

Why are you using a consumer level OS/setup for this? PC's setup in a corporate environment are tightly controlled, even with Windows 10.

Why are you perpetuating the myth that there is a difference?

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

#525

Post by kyberias »

klingonopera wrote: post #512
kyberias wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Thanks for this. I must've shrugged it off initially for using the "IoT"-buzzword ( who are they selling too?). Reading up a bit on it here[1], and again, I'm appalled. I don't want to waste time and money cherry-picking Windows versions. There's IoT Core, Mobile and Enterprise, and then there's Enterprise LTSB, apparently with year codes too, what gives? Nah, all this time and money wasted doing that can be invested…

Granted the IoT buzzword naming is confusing. Windows 10 IoT Enterprise is simply the good old "Embedded" edition which is fundamentally Windows 10 Enterprise with a price-tag. LTSB means that they have a specific version of Windows 10 that they will support for a long time. For embedded applications, that is perfect.

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

#526

Post by Kuinox »

jug wrote: post #523
Kuinox wrote: post #491

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Weird location because local user accounts have little to do with domains. :P

The sole purpose of this location is to create an offline account... Seriously.

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

#527

Post by mastazi »

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

I didn’t feel the need to specify that in my comment because the linked Reddit thread already explains it, it’s the top upvoted comment, you can see it just below the initial post. When I said “this is incredibly bad” I was referring to the dark pattern, I wasn’t trying to suggest that the option had been completely removed.

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

#528

Post by wolco »

cwojno wrote: post #203

I've switched to Linux + Mint in part because I don't want to be using Windows any more. Many of my games work with Steam on Linux now, actually. With Google's docs/drive, everything works cross platform. I really have no productivity loss by not using Windows any more.

Mint vs Ubutuntu vs fedora.

What's the right choice in 2019 for a power desktop user who wants video drivers to work,for a 7 year old hp machine?

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

#529

Post by gnud »

theclaw wrote: post #421
moontear wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for that search problem link I am exactly one of those users and start menu search just isn’t working. I have switched to Launchy as an alternative after years of being happy with the start menu search. I can finally look for a solution now, nice.

May I recommend Keypirinha [1] over Launchy? I recently tried all of the launchers I could find for Windows and KP was by far the best, and does not get enough recognition in my view. [1] http://keypirinha.com/

Keypirnha is apparently only for "keyboard ninjas", so I'll stick with something made for the rest of us.

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

#530

Post by Spivak »

klingonopera wrote: post #512
kyberias wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Thanks for this. I must've shrugged it off initially for using the "IoT"-buzzword ( who are they selling too?). Reading up a bit on it here[1], and again, I'm appalled. I don't want to waste time and money cherry-picking Windows versions. There's IoT Core, Mobile and Enterprise, and then there's Enterprise LTSB, apparently with year codes too, what gives? Nah, all this time and money wasted doing that can be invested…

Linux is not a one-time investment unfortunately since the software landscape is constantly changing. For people who are invested this is generally a good thing. There are more distros that you’ll run into in the wild than editions of Windows easily which is doubly true in the embedded space.

In the enterprise where Red Hat and Canonical dominate licensing is becomes an issue again when you use their paid offerings.

So don’t get me wrong. I want people to switch to Linux but we gotta be realistic that it’s not a panacea.

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