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

Today, Microsoft made available to its experimental Dev Channel a brand-new Windows Insider build that included a substantial number of brand-new enhancements and features. 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.”
Naturally, removing bypassnro makes it more difficult for individuals without an Internet connection or Microsoft Account to exit Windows setup. 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.
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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. However, Windows 11 will send you fewer notifications and other upsells if you use a local account. Whatever your reasoning, you’ll need to find a different workaround for future Windows versions.
As we discuss in detail in our extensive post about removing the clutter from a new Windows 11 installation, there are still a few relatively simple workarounds to the Microsoft Account requirement. 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).
The Dev Channel “jumped ahead” to a new set of build numbers earlier this month. The more specific version numbers that distinguish Windows 11 versions are called build numbers. The 26200 build numbers are used for the new builds; the 26100 build numbers are used for the public version of Windows 11 24H2, and the 26120 build numbers are used for the more stable Windows Insider channels. The bypassnro change might not make it out to the normal, public versions of Windows until the 25H2 update is released sometime this fall.