A few weeks ago I helped one 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.