The last way to set up Windows 11 without a Microsoft account is a link Microsoft put there itself

Microsoft has spent the better part of two years closing every exit from the Microsoft account screen during Windows 11 setup. It seems to have left one open, and it is a link on its own page.

The history reads as a run of small executions. The oobe\bypassnro script went early in 2025. Last October, build 26120.6772 took out the registry value that had replaced it, both of the ms-cxh commands people were using, the trick of entering deliberately wrong credentials to force a failure, and the older network-flow workaround. Microsoft's reasoning each time was the same: these methods let people "exit OOBE with a device that is not fully configured for use".

What still works, as of this weekend, is almost funny. On the sign-in screen during a Windows 11 Home install there is a paragraph of small print with a "Learn more" link buried in it. Not the big button, the link. Click it and setup goes straight to the create-a-local-account screen. No command prompt, no registry editing, no unplugging the network cable, no inventing a fake email address. Windows Latest found it on the current Home ISO, PC Gamer tested it and confirmed it works, and it reportedly survives on an experimental Insider build too. Whether it survives the next cumulative update is another question.

Know the trade-off before you take it. A local account is genuinely simpler and keeps your PC out of a cloud profile, but nothing is then holding your BitLocker recovery key on your behalf, so if the drive is encrypted and something goes wrong, that key is your problem alone. Tendvane's security posture check tells you whether the drive is encrypted in the first place, which is the question most people have never actually answered.