Earlier this week, Microsoft announced that it was removing a popular command line that allowed users to bypass connecting to the internet and signing into a Microsoft Account during the setup phase on Windows 11.
Since 2022, Windows 11 has required both an internet connection and Microsoft Account when setting up a new PC. Naturally, not everybody wants this, and so workarounds and bypasses have been discovered.
The most popular bypass was “oobe\bypassnro” which, when typed into the command prompt during the Windows 11 setup experience, would enable a button that let you skip connecting to the internet, thus bypassing the Microsoft Account requirement.
Microsoft has said that it is removing this command to push more users to connect to the internet and sign in with a Microsoft Account during the setup phase. Understandably, the internet is outraged.
While oobe\bypassnro is being removed, the actual registry entry that enables the button to skip connecting to the internet isn’t, at least not yet. So you can still manually create the registry edit yourself, but that’s a much longer and tedious process.
But fret not, as a new, perhaps better bypass has already been discovered that still uses the command prompt (which you can open with Shift + F10) and makes skipping the Microsoft Account sign-in step a total breeze.
Discovered by user @witherornot1337 on X, typing “start ms-cxh:localonly” into the command prompt during the Windows 11 setup experience will allow you to create a local account directly without needing to skip connecting to the internet first.
The command will pop up an older, Windows 10 style interface that lets you specify a username and password for the local account. Then, clicking next will take you straight to preparing the desktop, before being asked to specify your privacy settings.
We tested this method on the latest Windows 11 preview build 26200 and can confirm that it works. It’s a much more streamlined process compared to the old oobe\bypassnro method, which required the PC to restart and to slowly progress through the Windows 11 setup experience before landing on the desktop.
This new method doesn’t require a restart and skips straight to the end of the setup experience, landing just at the point where Windows asks you to configure privacy settings. It’s a win all around!
While this new workaround works for now, something tells me that Microsoft is likely going to crack down on these bypasses more often going forward. So, it’s unknown how long this new bypass will work, so use it while you can!
