It’s been a few years since I’ve needed to install a version of Windows on a PC for personal use. I have a license for Windows 10 Pro, but today I found out it is no longer possible to get through the installation without first creating an account with Microsoft.
I don’t want to do this. Does anybody have any way to get around it? The stuff I’ve read online basically ends up being create your account switch to a local account after installation and delete your account. I want a better solution. Would installing a much older version of Windows 10 work? The whole reason I got an msdn license back in the day is so I didn’t have to do this.
Edit: 10/2/2023
I thank you all for giving me advice and ideas. Much I had already tried before posting my question here, and some suggestions and experiences led me to keep at it. Here’s my experience for others who have a similar problem.
I downloaded the ISO from Microsoft - Win10_22H2_English_x64v1. I used Ventoy to launch the installer. The first time I went through, I connected to Wi-Fi. As soon as I did that, it sealed my fate. By this time in the process, it installed the boot partition on my HD and saved this information so every time I tried to restart the installer, it always went through language, keyboard, then “enter email address”. All the suggestions for fake values simply triggered “This email is already used. Please choose another”, and that was it.
I was getting ready to wipe the partition and try again, but decided to turn off Wi-Fi in the BIOS first to see if that worked. It did. This time it tried to convince me to set up the network and failed and I was able to create a local account.
The way this multi-version installer works is annoying. It installed Windows Home edition, so I had to “know” that I could go to settings and enter a key. Once I put in the key, it “upgraded” to Pro edition, and I was done.
Next time I have to do this, I’ll see if Rufus works. It seems that will remove some annoyance. Either way, I will avoid configuring Wi-Fi until after install next time. I gotta say, I am not looking forward to the day when I must upgrade to Windows 11. So far I’ve been able to avoid actually buying a new copy due to my aging MSDN key. By the time I’m forced to “upgrade”, I might have to cough up some cash for something I don’t want, but am forced to own.
It should be illegal.
Anyway, now that I know I can still use my MSDN key to get an updated Win 10, I feel a bit more comfortable with re-imaging my Dell laptop from dual-boot to Linux only, then install Windows as a VM for these times I need to use it. Fortunately, that is increasingly rare.
Windows is Microsoft’s operating system, and unlike Android, there are fully featured Linux alternatives for all hardware. Why do you need to use Windows, specifically? - noting that needing to use Windows specific software should not be the reason, as WINE exists. You clearly don’t have a specific affiliation to Microsoft, either, as you don’t want to have an account with them. What’s tying you to Windows?
Lol try installing Visual Studio 22 or even 19 on WINE and get back to me lmfao 😂
That is solvable, though.
https://www.jetbrains.com/rider/
Doesn’t take much time to get used to, and it does most things VS does.
Rider sucks ass for C# development, Jet rains makes some good IDEs no question. But when it comes to dotnet development VS is king
Why, though? I used both and I wouldn’t say one is strictly inferior to the other.
Agreed. This is why I took the time to get comfortable with vscode. Still, in real world business development sometes it takes visual studio, and that is an excellent example.
There are times when I do need windows. That is why I kept the default install on my laptop and put Linux on dual boot.
In this case, my son wants to play bedrock Minecraft, and eventually I’m sure he will want to play games that don’t work on Linux.
For recent examples of why I need to have it around just in case, I’m interviewing for jobs and 90% of them use Teams. It took me a few weeks to get a solution to work on Linux.
For teams for Linux, this works well https://github.com/IsmaelMartinez/teams-for-linux
That is what I am using, however I had to find a way to open it when I click on a teams meeting link. After I did that, it would not get past the initial splash. I eventually found that I have to hit CTRL-R one to three times to get it to go to the meeting. See, it took lots of searching and head scratching to get it working.
Couldn’t you just use the web app?
No. It does not like Firefox for Linux.
Have you tried it in Chromium?
Nobody asked about ditching Windows, though.
But if you are really interested, for me it’s VR games.