Note: the MacOS part is false
Claim: you don’t need a Microsoft account to run windows. Here’s how.
Step 1: set up a Microsoft account.
Finally, some sense.
The only thing you need a Microsoft account for is to play Minecraft. And use other Microsoft products and services that Microsoft keeps pushing their terrible account system on.
You can actually download and play minecraft without a Microsoft account in multiple ways.
You can. It is in fact possible to play Minecraft without any code from Microsoft, as there are alternative implementations for both the frontend and the server. You can’t play on regular servers that way, though.
With Windows 10 eol coming up, I installed Bazzite on my buddies computer. All he uses it for is games, browser and editing the occasional document. The transition has been really seemless so far, and he is not technologically adept in the slightest.
Linux is really mature nowadays. I spent like five hours getting my NIC to work back in 2006 on my laptop. Now, it all seems to work pretty seamlessly. For people who just want to use a basic GUI and press “install” buttons, I think it’s perfectly fine.
It’s even simpler than I stalling windows.
For those who do want to continue to use Windows 10 after EOL, 0patch is providing post-EOL security updates.
Reminds me of the most traumatising conversation I’ve had in a good while, which included the following (abridged) exchange:
Me: You do know that, if payment for your yearly M365 fees fails for some reason, or you simply don’t want or don’t care about it anymore and let your subscription expire, you will get read-only access to your OWN data, which is stored in YOUR computer, and unable to create new files in Office ?
Him: So what? If you have a newspaper subscription and you stop paying, you won’t get the newspaper anymore, that’s just how subscriptions work.
…
I am not talking about a 10 year old. This is a 50+ year old dude who does entrepreneur’s consulting for a living.
Idk about you guys but I got sick of using an os that obviously doesn’t want me to use it.
Just make a burner first-born for the initial sacrifice pledge & then make other local children as you please.
You don’t even need Microsoft burner account
Rufus takes care of it for you and sets up the usb image to bypass.
Unfortunately, 2025 was not the year of Linux for my new HTPC due to some weird EDID incompatibilities between my LG and the Intel arc iGPU on several different distro. Refused to allow for 1440p outside of 120hz and refused to go above 60hz at 4k.
yup oobe/bypassnro
You don’t even need that anymore. I just spun up and bunch of VMs and all you need is a domain join. It doesn’t prompt for anything anymore.
Not a Windows user myself but isn’t setting up a domain a pretty complicated process? Especially if you only want to bypass the account requirements. You would need another system running windows server or spin up a samba DC.
No, you don’t need a domain. You just have to select that option to avoid signing up for an account. They must have changed it, because it’s super simple now. I spun up like ten Windows 11 VMs last week using this method.
Got it. It might be limited to windows 11 pro though, since the home version can’t join domains I believe.
Yep, you’re right. You still have to do the OOBE skip with Home edition. I’m just playing around to see if I can find another way.
When activating with MAS you might as well just install a Pro version anyways.
Let me test it because yes, I was doing Education Pro ones.
It’s only if you have a specific version if I recall that you actually need one
Ima start making charcoal wood, gathering mesquite as I wander about the southwestern part of our country for the rest of eternity.
So in other words, just switch to Linux already
All you have to do is a domain join now. No skipping the OOBE via command line, etc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Plummer
David William Plummer (born August 9, 1968) is a Canadian-American programmer and entrepreneur. He created the Task Manager for Windows, the Space Cadet Pinball ports to Windows NT, Zip file support for Windows, HyperCache[2] for the Amiga and many other software products.
2025: The guy that wrote Windows’ Task Manager at Microsoft is creating burner accounts to get the OS installed.
I’ve been doing that whenever I had to do a Windows installation in recent years. But I don’t plan to ever install Windows again.
Would you really believe any of that?
He has been making Youtube videos for years, if he was a fraud, which you imply, someone would have found evidence of it
He was actually convicted of fraud. Remember “Your computer has a virus. Install my (shady) app to fix it” banners in 2000s? That was also him.
I hadn’t heard anything about this - quite interesting in context of the discussion, and also in that it only has a grain of truth.
His company was sued for violations of the Consumer Protection Act (for making shitty misleading ‘you may have a virus! Click here for free scan’ popups and shady apps like ‘RegistryCleaner’, as you allude), which they settled for $150k plus $40k in court fees.
He was never charged with fraud nor convicted - that is something much more serious.
Ah so the guy is a POS, so why should I listen to him.
You shouldn’t, and i don’t wish to either. I just don’t understand why there was a need to take his already shady and shitty behaviour and embellish it to say he was convicted of fraud, when the truth would have been adequate.
Took years for pirate software to be outed as a fraud, he also ran a YouTube channel for years pretending to have been a game dev at blizzard.
Except Pirate isn’t fraud as in stolen valor, in the case of him it was just the house of cards of over embellishments finally caught up with him.
David was in Microsoft early and for a long time. Thinking he’s lying about that part is a bit rich.
Wait, believe what?
I promise real humans made Windows. Like, a lot of them. It’s not that weird.
But beyond that, trust me, that is this guy’s entire personality. I believe he uses his Microsoft access card with his picture as an image in thumbnails often. Which I’m now realizing I’ve judged him for when it’s probably in response to getting this type of reaction a bunch.
Well that’s the thing though, he claims he did a bunch of stuff at Microsoft and all of it is conveniently very fun to say in a YouTube video for views but literally none of it is verifiable. It would be fine if he was trustworthy but he’s also going around claiming “as an intern, I shipped a lot of major features” which that’s just straight up false, interns don’t do that.
At the very least, I would take all claims made on his wikipedia article that are not immediately followed by a citation with a massive grain of salt.
The fact he then went on to sell registry cleaners and support contracts is telling.
This is astoundingly weird.
I mean, he didn’t show up from the ether to make this tweet, he’s a semi-well known youtuber, his anecdotes about his time at Microsoft have been reported in specialist press often and to my knowledge nobody at Microsoft ever went “hey, we don’t know who that is”. No matter how many grains of salt you take on uncited Wikipedia content, there are enough citations there to verify his identity, from local newspaper coverage of his career to links to public talks mentioning his background. He has frequently namedropped coworkers at the time, who to my knowledge haven’t contested his accounts. The Wikipedia page in question isn’t even a hagiography, bringing up his failed companies and legal issues surrounding them.
I don’t mind skepticism, but this is paranoia. Is it possible the guy is a bullshitter whose wide reaching lies have somehow not triggered a rebuke from the people he has specifically named? I guess weirder things have happened. Would you be questioning his background if he was saying something you don’t perceive as disagreeing with you? Absolutely not.
I have no more reason to question this guy having worked at Microsoft (and on the Task Manager specifically, which is a really weirdly mid-tier thing to brag about for twenty years if you didn’t do it) than to think Niccolo Venerandi didn’t contribute to KDE Plasma because he has a Youtube channel. It’s just a strange way to react to this.
It’s easy to lie about this stuff and not get called out by the company or employees. See: PirateSoftware
Yes, famously never-called-out PirateSoftware
You are not immune to propaganda
Wait,.did PirateSoftware not actually work at Blizzard?
Brother, he got away with it for years without being called out. Are you stupid? Did you really think I meant that he was never called out for it? Sometimes the shit you nerds say is downright incredible.
Why wouldn’t you?
What do you believe the existence of a dormant Microsoft account does on your device?
Instead I look at the sky and I feel nothing
Tonight the sky is empty
But that is nothing newYou know I hate to be alone.
I want to be wrong.
You’re gonna need to be more specific
He has made this video with Dave Cutler. I strongly doubt there would be any reason for Cutler to give an MS PirateSoftware any free endorsement.
Funny that this comes from a Windows dev.
Was like 20 years ago
Well, yeah, he’s a dev and an end user, and not the one calling the shots.
Dave’s trying to justify their work.
Is Dave Dangerous?
Dastardly Dave
I mean I wouldn’t trust him he did popups saying you have a virus install my software. So not exactly a standup person.
I can assure you his intent was not to justify but rather to clear up a myth and help people
He has never outright said “modern Windows sucks” but he has indirectly alluded to that being his opinion many times, e.g. in one livestream where he was setting up Windows 11, he opened up Task Manager and said “wow, there’s thousands of open handles when Windows is just idling and the user isn’t running anything… huh…”
He is of the opinion that Windows 11 is trying to force people to throw away perfectly good machines because of the stupid TPM requirement, as you can tell by his videos from a few months ago
He has also revealed multiple times that he daily drives macOS and only uses Windows (in a VM) when absolutely necessary
David Plumber is a former Windows engineer, and has a YouTube channel where he shares stories about his time at Microsoft.
Of course he has positive Windows opinions, and of course he yaps about it like he’s an expert: because he is
His “expert” opinion is quite dated
He wrote task manager. I trust him.
The only Microsoft’s app that I used everyday, multiple times a day in the past. Just to avoid the computer from completely crashing.
I watch his videos from time to time, he stays quite up to date when it comes to the underpinnings of modern software engineering. Mind you, just because he retired doesn’t mean he stopped tinkering and building. By all accounts he is still poking around in a number of projects and contributes his fair share of expertise. I’m not a fan of him not outright calling out Microsoft for their bullshit, but I do respect the sheer amount of expertise he brings to the table. Calling him out of date, particularly with the level of understanding needed to make something like a task manager, doesn’t seem fair.
Really? It seems pretty up to date since he’s talking about something that happened in the last year or so.
deleted by creator
He also loves pretending he developed every single Windows dialogue box, tool, application, default software and interface element, when the truth is more like:
He says quite the opposite. He’s pretty open about what he was involved with and how long it’s been since he’s worked for MS. I’ve watched quite a few of his videos. He’s not what you claim.
I don’t know who needs to hear this, but you don’t need to smell shit while eating it.
You do need to get it down your throat, but you can just keep your nose pinched with your fingers, same as MacOS.
After that, throw up as much as you like. It’s what I do. Total calories delta: 100 kcal
wild kink but I don’t judge
much
This comment is missing the word “Linux”
Doesn’t he think Linux is bad or a disease or something.
