In the latest Windows 11 preview build, Microsoft removed the “bypassnro” command, which let users skip signing into a Microsoft Account when installing Windows.
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Genuine question:
What's the point of a long password on Windows? I understand that you sometimes don't want people accessing your stuff, but at it takes to bypass that and someone access your files is booting off of a USB stick. Or do you perhaps use full disk encryption?
Most people are more worried about remote attackers than someone physically putting hands on their PC. But, yes, you should pretty much without exception be using full disk encryption.
It's very assholish of Microsoft to lock bitlocker behind the Pro license.
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It's double speak.
It's like when they say "We value your privacy" it really means "Selling your data is worth a lot of money/value to me".
"User Security" means "We want to secure customers/users for our cloud services by forcing a login to a microsoft account"
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I use that command partially because Microsoft accounts don't allow passwords as long as the password I like to use for my PC
Which suggests to me that MS stores plaintext passwords. Because a hash function doesn't care about the length of what it's hashing, the output will always be the same length, so they could verify a 300 character password with the same storage space as a 3 character password.
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The command
OOBE\bypassnro(.cmd) one types into the command prompt (after opening it with Shift+F10) for the bypass is the location of a batch file they will be removing. You can still do whatever it's doing (adding a registry key and restarting) by typing the command manually or providing a copy of the file on a USB drive. After a restart, the OS will check for the registry key AND lack of internet connection to provide the local account option.For the record, the contents of the file are
@echo off reg add HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\OOBE /v BypassNRO /t REG\_DWORD /d 1 /f shutdown /r /t 0Until they remove checking that reg key from all versions other than maybe enterprise. If they decide that running windows requires an MS online account, they can keep bumping up the difficulty of running it without whenever they want.
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The command
OOBE\bypassnro(.cmd) one types into the command prompt (after opening it with Shift+F10) for the bypass is the location of a batch file they will be removing. You can still do whatever it's doing (adding a registry key and restarting) by typing the command manually or providing a copy of the file on a USB drive. After a restart, the OS will check for the registry key AND lack of internet connection to provide the local account option.For the record, the contents of the file are
@echo off reg add HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\OOBE /v BypassNRO /t REG\_DWORD /d 1 /f shutdown /r /t 0Thank you! I've bookmarked this for next time I have a Windows reinstall! Hoping it still works then...
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What is Windows 10 LTSC? LTSC is the abbreviation of Long Term Servicing Channel. It is a stripped-down enterprise operating system based on a specific version of Windows 10. Windows 10 LTSC don’t have pre-installed apps such as Microsoft Edge, Cortana assistant, News, etc. Using the LTSC service model, you can delay receiving feature updates and only receive monthly device quality updates.
Holy SHIT they made a version with the worst stuff removed AND they're going to maintain it longer? That is the version everybody should be using.
I'm slowly switching to linux but there are things I'm going to need Windows for for the foreseeable future, and I think I've found how I can make that happen. Thank you.
It's used for industrial applications like manufacturing and whatnot, stuff that really doesn't need to be updated regularly since the software is effectively legacy.
Hell, we've got tools from the 2000s still running Win2k.
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So here we go. Kiosk machines with random Microsoft account and MFA to private phone numbers. Glad I don’t have to manage that pile of s**t.
That's what W10 LTSC is for.
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Is mint still using that old gnome fork DE? KDE Plasma might be a nicer and still familiar experience for people coming from windows
It's a fork of Gnome but its well maintined, very familliar to windows users, and very reliable.
I personally pefer KDE but Cinnamon is likely a better choice for new users.
Not to mention, Mint itself is a super reliable distro. I use Fedora but keep my partner on Mint and she has maybe 10% of the issues I do.
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as soon as i had arch linux set up in the bathroom i sat down to take a wet crap and said ooooh god yea FRRSSHHHFFTTGTTTBBLPP fuuuuuck yeah that's good PRRGGFFFHTTSSGGRTTTT uuuuggghh fuck
I mean, yes, but...what the fuck
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Any Lenovo laptop is a very safe bet! You can just install Linux onto it and should work great
They're probably okay, but I've avoided Lenovo since that one time they injected their own certificate authority to break all your internet security and middle-man in their own ads (and spy on you? Who knows?).
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Just one more reason to skip Windows 11…
My hardware refresh came up this year. The asked for a MacBook instead of a windows laptop for the first time in my long career. Linux isn’t an option at my org yet.
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Just one more reason to skip Windows 11…
My work laptop has W11. It's....fine. But I don't have to manage it, so... ¯\(°_o)/¯
I had W11 on my personal gaming PC for a total of 6 months before I got fed up with it. Running W10 until I make sure it'll run everything I need it to on Linux Mint (LMDE).
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Until they remove checking that reg key from all versions other than maybe enterprise. If they decide that running windows requires an MS online account, they can keep bumping up the difficulty of running it without whenever they want.
They are keeping around so many deprecated features for internal use and whatnot, I would be surprised if they did remove this registry check.
Until Windows 12 is released, you can always use an old ISO and then update to the newest version.
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My hardware refresh came up this year. The asked for a MacBook instead of a windows laptop for the first time in my long career. Linux isn’t an option at my org yet.
If you have the money to drop on a Mac it’s definitely better, but there’s a bit more work to get games going. So if you play games elsewhere a Mac is to easy to recommend.
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If you have the money to drop on a Mac it’s definitely better, but there’s a bit more work to get games going. So if you play games elsewhere a Mac is to easy to recommend.
It’s for work only, no gaming. I have a Steam Deck and a Linux desktop for gaming.
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Rufus has an option to auto add this for you when building a bootable drive. Works great.
Still using Rufus? Ventoy is the way of the future. One USB, hundreds of ISOs.
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Still using Rufus? Ventoy is the way of the future. One USB, hundreds of ISOs.
I might be OOTL but wasn't there some concerns with the developer or something? I thought I heard something but I forgot what
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That's what W10 LTSC is for.
Until that isn’t supported anymore, yes. It’s a solution… for now.
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A few weeks ago I helped one of my client's employees set up their brand new laptop, which came with Win11 installed, of course. They just need it for basic work stuff and there's no chance in hell anything other than Windows is a viable option here.
We work remotely so I would help them get set up to a point where they could at least share their screen to me, or I could take over via remote access myself. I just needed to guide them through the steps "blind" for a short while.
So we go through the Windows 11 first time setup together. All seems to go ok until Windows asks them to log into their MS account or create one. No problem, we should be able to do that, right? Only that we can't. We're connected to the WiFi, etc., yet they get some generic ass error message like "Sorry, something went wrong" and that's that.
Ok, so we can't log in with an online account. Let's try offline as a fallback! We set the username, password... "Sorry, something went wrong" again. I don't use Windows myself, I've been a Linux user for years now, I don't have any freaking clue how to remotely diagnose an vague issue that literally prevents them from getting the laptop to a functional state. So I Google the problem and the recommended answer is to run this magic "bypassnro" command. It will cut all the mandatory online account bullshit, move straight to a reliable offline account setup screen, and allow us to, you know, actually do work? And it worked!
If I hadn't had that command at my disposal, that I had to use to work around Microsoft's broken ass setup UX, I would've probably spent twice or three times longer coaching my non-tech-savvy client through booting into fail safe mode and doing all kinds of arcane sysadmin shit that I don't even have to ever think about in Linux. All this just to get them into the desktop.
And Microsoft have decided to take it away. Nice one.
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yes but they make it hard to access, and it has legal issues too so you maybe shouldn't use it in a business setting
I discovered recently that they make the regular ISOs hard to access too. It didn't want to let me download it from a linux machine.
But there's always a way to access this stuff.
What are the legal issues?
