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New Windows 11 build makes mandatory Microsoft Account sign-in even more mandatory

"Bypassnro" is an easy MS Account workaround for Home and Pro Windows editions.

Andrew Cunningham – | 259
A PC running Windows 11. Credit: Microsoft
A PC running Windows 11. Credit: Microsoft
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Microsoft released a new Windows Insider build of Windows 11 to its experimental Dev Channel today, with a fairly extensive batch of new features and tweaks. But the most important one for enthusiasts and PC administrators is buried halfway down the list: This build removes a command prompt script called bypassnro, which up until now has been a relatively easy and reliable way to circumvent the otherwise mandatory Microsoft Account sign-in requirement on new Windows 11 PCs and fresh installs of Windows 11 on existing PCs.

Microsoft's Windows Insider Program lead Amanda Langowski and Principal Product Manager Brandon LeBlanc were clear that this change is considered a feature and not a bug.

"We’re removing the bypassnro.cmd script from the build to enhance security and user experience of Windows 11," Langowski and LeBlanc write in the post. "This change ensures that all users exit setup with internet connectivity and a Microsoft Account."

Of course, the removal of bypassnro makes life harder for people who want to exit Windows setup without Internet connectivity or a Microsoft Account. You might be setting up a computer in a place with no Internet connection, or you might simply prefer a local user account like the ones that all past Windows versions allowed you to use.

There are benefits to a Microsoft Account—easy access to any existing Microsoft 365 or OneDrive subscriptions, automated encryption for your local disk and backup of your drive's encryption key for recovery purposes, and syncing of certain settings between PCs. But using a local account reduces the number of notifications and other upsells that Windows 11 will bother you with. Whatever your reasoning, you'll need to find a different workaround for future Windows versions.

There are still a few relatively easy workarounds to the Microsoft Account requirement, as we detail in our extensive post about removing the cruft from a fresh Windows 11 install. But the bypassnro command had the benefit of being relatively easy to explain and of working equally well for both the Home and Pro editions of Windows 11.

The bypassnro command will continue to work in the current stable versions of Windows 11, including the 24H2 update from late last year. The change has only been made in the Windows Insider Dev Channel build of the operating system, which is generally where Microsoft tests less-stable features that are further from release (for what it's worth, Dev Channel changes are also more likely to be reversed without being released to the public, though we wouldn't count on that here).

Earlier this month, the Dev Channel "jumped ahead" to a new set of build numbers (in short, the more detailed version numbers that distinguish different versions of Windows 11 from one another). The new builds are in the 26200 series; the public version of Windows 11 24H2 uses 26100 build numbers, and the more-stable Windows Insider channels use the 26120 series. The bypassnro change might not make it out to the normal, public versions of Windows until the 25H2 update is released sometime this fall.

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Andrew Cunningham Senior Technology Reporter
Andrew is a Senior Technology Reporter at Ars Technica, with a focus on consumer tech including computer hardware and in-depth reviews of operating systems like Windows and macOS. Andrew lives in Philadelphia and co-hosts a weekly book podcast called Overdue.
259 Comments
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chiasticslide
chiasticslide
If seeing is believing, they're just removing the actual script from the installer. But the script is only a 3-liner CMD. Hopefully entering this manually should still work. Or slipstreaming it into the ISO somehow. Or switching to a different OS.

@echo off
reg add HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\OOBE /v BypassNRO /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f
shutdown /r /t 0
J.C. Helios
J.C. Helios
...
I came across another bypass of the MSA requirement, though: open cmd from the installer as you would for bypassnro, but instead you type: start ms-cxh:localonly

What's more, this new Microsoft Account bypass method is apparently better than ever! Quoth Windows Central:

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!

@thomsirveaux, FYI 👆
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