Whether it was because of the new college semester starting or just because it was somehow cheaper than a refurbished Windows 10 computer, you ended up with a Windows 11 machine and you're hesitant to start it up because of all the bad press you've read about it. You want to use this computer, but you don't know how to do it without consigning your private files away to the monetisation machine of greater capitalism. Thanks to Tumblr user, cinna-bunnie, here now is how to setup Windows 11 so it's a computer, not an advertising engine. Please note, this will only work with Windows 11 computers that have not yet been set up. I hope to be able to provide guidance for people with initialised versions of the OS at a later time.
First, start up the computer. If it's a laptop, make sure it has a battery charge and is connected to mains power. When setting up your device for the first time, press SHIFT+F10 for desktops, SHIFT+Fn+F10 for laptops; and click into the window that opens. Inside this window, type the following text string, paying very close attention to the direction of the slash marking:
OOBE\BypassNRO
...then press Enter. This should restart your computer, but if it does not, type this string next:
shutdown /r /t 0 /f
Once your computer has restarted and you've been returned to the setup, there will be a button that was not there before, where you can tell Windows "I don't have internet". Clicking on that will allow you to sidestep synching your Microsoft Account to Windows and allowing the setup to proceed without needing to connect to the internet.
Proceed with setup, then once your desktop is visible, search for gpedit. This is the Local Group Policy Editor, which is basically a huge, great, nuclear power plant-style control panel where you get to make decisions about how Windows operates. This is what they took away from us in newer versions of Windows 10 that gives the user total control over Windows' automatic networking abilities, amongst myriad other things. For now, however, we have specific needs of GPEDIT, specifically these...
In the sidebar, open User Configuration > Administrative Templates > Start Menu and Taskbar. In the list of policies, find the following and set them to "Enabled"...
Turn off user tracking
Turn off feature advertisement balloon notifications
Remove Recommended section from Start Menu
Remove Personalised Website Recommendations
Do not search internet
Now, open the folder stack, Windows Components > Cloud Content, and set these to "enabled"...
Turn off all Windows Spotlight features
Do not use diagnostic data for tailored experiences
Now, open Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Search to kneecap Cortana...
Allow Cortana {DISABLED}
Don't search the web or display web results in Search {ENABLED}
In Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Componenents > News and Interests, make sure this setting is disabled...
Enable news and interests on the taskbar
While you've still got GPEDIT open, have a look through the list of Windows Components to see if any of them are going to try phoning home, and disabling that functionality. Also, save yourself a major headache while you're here and find the option to disable Windows Automatic Updates, which is definitely something you're going to wish you'd done in 2 years when Microsoft nukes GPEDIT just like they did in Windows 10. Finally, Microsoft is going to poke and prod you to synch your Microsoft Account to Windows 11. This is going to get really annoying, so shut GPEDIT and go to System > Notifications > Additional Settings and uncheck everything you find there.
If, for some reason, you cannot get the first step, involving OOBE, to work; various people responding to the post I'm referring to on Tumblr have suggested logging into a bogus email account in the initial stage of setup. Specifically, "noemail@noemail.com" and keysmashing in the Password line. After a few failed attempts to synch to this nonexistent account, Windows will give up and proceed without the account.
--24 August 2023--