Set up Windows 11
with only a local account. You don't want a Windows account? I got you covered. We can set up Windows 11 without one. Hi, everyone. Leo Notenboom here for askleo.com. It's not uncommon for people to want to set up Windows 11 without
the use of a Microsoft account, but Microsoft, of course, makes that not
impossible, but certainly not obvious. I will walk you through the process of We're setting up Windows
11 with only a local account. Here we are in Windows 11 setup. We've just begun the setup process, and we're being asked those early
questions about keyboards and more. This is the right country. This is the right keyboard. I do not want to add
another keyboard layout. Of course, we have to accept
the license agreement. I'm going to name my device. So
after a reboot or two, we are now at the point where we're going
to decide what machine this is going to be, work or personal,
and set up the accounts. We'll set up for personal use. Click on Next. And now it wants you to, quote unquote, unlock your Microsoft experience
with a sign in button. Go ahead and click on that. Now, here's the trick. I'm going to type in no@thankyou.Com. That turns out to be a real Microsoft account that apparently everybody's using
for this that has been locked out because we've all been getting
the password wrong too many times. That's the key. I'm going to say, Yep, this is
my Microsoft account, no@thankyou.com.
Click on Next. Enter a password. Again, don't know the password, so I'm just going to type
in some random characters. Oops, something went wrong. That's again, okay. Someone entered an incorrect password
for this account too many times. Fine.
Don't care. Because when we hit next,
now we get to enter in our name. I'm using L-E-O-N, which is something
I use commonly on my machines. I'm entering in a password. Confirming that password. Of course, I need to do
my security questions. When you use a local account, you are required to provide three
answers to three security questions. Since this is just a demonstration, I'm going to come up with three
completely random answers to these things. Again, when you're using a local account,
these are going to be required. Honestly, I suggest you go ahead and set
them up to be meaningful for you. It's unfortunate that they continue to use
security questions, but here we are. We'll hit next. Now we get all the usual
privacy setting kinds of things. If you want to, you can go
ahead and turn them all off. In general, when people choose a local account, it's usually because they
want less intrusion from Microsoft. So all of these things should
probably be turned off. And we're signed in automatically. That doesn't prove anything,
though, does it? We could certainly take a look at the system and see what
account we're signed in as. LeoN, local account,
as we decided earlier. If I right-click on this and just sign out,
It's Leoan, the local account that I can sign in using the password I set up
for that local account. And that's it. We have Windows 11 set up
without a Microsoft account to be seen. Now, there is one thing that I
want to caution you about. It may not be a problem. And in fact, I just tested it
out on this fresh installation. But many Any Microsoft services will
require that you have a Microsoft account. In order to use those services, then you will have to sign in to those
services using that Microsoft account. There have been situations and at least
second-hand accounts, of doing that and then having the system,
having your machine, actually switch to using a Microsoft
account for your identity. Now, in this case, for For example,
I now have OneDrive configured and running,
but I have it configured and running using a OneDrive account that is not
my sign-in account. If I take If you look here,
you can see it's askleoexample@hotmail.com.
That's fine. The good news is that it does not seem to have impacted anything
else on this system. My sign-in account is still my local account, but I I want to caution you
to be careful when you sign in to a Microsoft account for any reason
if you want to make sure that no Microsoft account gets added
to your actual computer. But that being said,
you now have Windows 11 with no Microsoft account, a local account
only for signing in. For updates, for comments, for links related to this
topic and more, visit askleo.com/167438. I'm Leo Notenbaum, and this is askleo.com thanks for watching.
