Are Microsoft Accounts Required to use W7 or W10?

SIW2 said:

Disconnect from the internet. At the stage when it demands an internet connection, pres shift+F10 to open cmd prompt. Type oobe\bypassnro and press enter. It will reboot. After the reboot, click on the small writing at bottom right in blue that says "I dont have internet"

I did all that but maybe it didn't work because the WiFi was enabled. I forgot how to disable the WiFi at the time. Now that I found out how to enable airplane mode I may try it again.

Note this was a refurbished laptop that replaced the original one that was broken. I was setting up the 500GB SSD that came with it. After Windows 11 Home was set up I replaced this 500GB SSD with the 2 x 1TB SSDs from the original laptop. The 1TB boot drive was originally cloned from the original 500GB which was set up with a local account back in 2022. Back then to bypass the requirement for a Microsoft account all I had to do is enter a fake Microsoft account. It then said "oops" and let me create a local account instead. I was surprised that this trick no longer worked.

BTW, you may wonder why I was setting up a replacement for a two year laptop. In mid August I took the original laptop in to a shop to replace the keyboard. Unfortunately, after they were done putting the laptop back together the speakers no longer worked. They tried replacing the speakers but that didn't help. I suspect but couldn't prove that something was broken on the motherboard during the repair. I gave them a lot of grief about this because I had paid $1500 for the laptop. They decided to settle the dispute by buying a refurbished laptop on Amazon and trading it for my original laptop. Note this laptop was the exact model as the one as the original one.

oof that sucks
Laptops are getting hard to open in some cases. I opened one the other day and there was literally no way i could of known the sequence of opening it unless there was a diagram which there wasn't.

I did try to guess the order of operation but it was not obvious Lucky the laptop was toast and i only wanted the ram and hard drive so i just snapped the back off it and then threw it away.
Was my Mums laptop that she lost the screen on to that commonly stupid issue where the screen dies due to a issue with the hinge. The motherboards in laptop today now are junk all integrated and not really accessible to repairs.

I even tried to use with the HDMI port on a monitor and it would not display there so they being crumby. They designed it so that the main screen goes down then the whole laptop is no good.

Really?

sounds very good.

Is your replace plan still valid on the "refurbished" one ?

MisterEd said:

I did all that but maybe it didn't work because the WiFi was enabled. I forgot how to disable the WiFi at the time. Now that I found out how to enable airplane mode I may try it again.

Note this was a refurbished laptop that replaced the original one that was broken. I was setting up the 500GB SSD that came with it. After Windows 11 Home was set up I replaced this 500GB SSD with the 2 x 1TB SSDs from the original laptop. The 1TB boot drive was originally cloned from the original 500GB which was set up with a local account back in 2022. Back then to bypass the requirement for a Microsoft account all I had to do is enter a fake Microsoft account. It then said "oops" and let me create a local account instead. I was surprised that this trick no longer worked.

BTW, you may wonder why I was setting up a replacement for a two year laptop. In mid August I took the original laptop in to a shop to replace the keyboard. Unfortunately, after they were done putting the laptop back together the speakers no longer worked. They tried replacing the speakers but that didn't help. I suspect but couldn't prove that something was broken on the motherboard during the repair. I gave them a lot of grief about this because I had paid $1500 for the laptop. They decided to settle the dispute by buying a refurbished laptop on Amazon and trading it for my original laptop. Note this laptop was the exact model as the one as the original one.

It sounds like I NEED to have a Microsoft Account on W7 and W10 as I use Outlook.

Am I correct?

Yes Outlook is a Microsoft account, meaning if you use the email etc then its also a Microsoft account. If you are just using it for the email side of it then its less of a Microsoft account but its the same account that gets used any time you need a Microsoft account.

Yes, and an MS account is also needed to use Skype, OneNote (though there is a non-account Microsoft Journal for W10 that basically does much the same thing) and others.

As for Windows 10 Education requires no online activation. Automatically pre-activated. Not sure if it's the same for Windows 7 Education, or even if there was such a thing.

siliconbeaver said:

Really?
sounds very good.
Is your replace plan still valid on the "refurbished" one ?

The original laptop had a 1 year warranty which expired October 2023. The replacement has a 90 day warranty. Since the computer repair shop purchased the ASUS refurbished laptop any warranty claims would have to go through them.

Mike Lynch said:

It sounds like I NEED to have a Microsoft Account on W7 and W10 as I use Outlook.

Am I correct?

You may well need a Microsoft account to use Outlook (or OneDrive, etc.) but for that there's no need to sign in to Windows with your MS account. You can add your MS account to your local account just for use by apps. All of my Win10/11 PCs just have local accounts, all of them can use OneDrive, etc.

Add Microsoft account to Local account for Hybrid account in Windows 11 Tutorial | Windows 11 Forum