Microsoft account refuseniks have another way of installing Windows
Get to the point where Windows prompts for a Microsoft account, then click the "Learn more" hyperlink beneath the text box and the Sign-in options link, and the OOBE skips to prompting for the user's name and eventually a password. Just like it used to do before Microsoft decided that you needed one of its accounts to use the software you thought you'd paid for. REG AD googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('labrador/thereg/article/desktop/b'); }); "Bob Pony" created a helpful post demonstrating the workaround.
- ▪Get to the point where Windows prompts for a Microsoft account, then click the "Learn more" hyperlink beneath the text box and the Sign-in options link, and the OOBE skips to prompting for the user's name and eventually a password.
- ▪Just like it used to do before Microsoft decided that you needed one of its accounts to use the software you thought you'd paid for.
- ▪REG AD googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('labrador/thereg/article/desktop/b'); }); "Bob Pony" created a helpful post demonstrating the workaround.
2 outlets in our directory ran this story, first to last over 23 hours. All of the coverage we found sits in one bucket: centre. That one-sidedness is itself worth noticing.
The Register publishes from United Kingdom and files mainly under tech. We currently carry 560 of its stories.
Story provenance
Source · retrieval · rights · ranking — open for full record
inspect →
Story provenance
Attribution is not the same as permission. This drawer separates discovery metadata, excerpts, WeSearch-generated summaries, reuse status, and whether the publisher receives the visit. Nothing here claims a legal grant the publisher has not made.
Record
| Original publisher | The Register |
| Canonical URL | https://www.theregister.com/os-platforms/2026/09/15/microsoft-account-refuseniks-have-another-way-of-installing-windows/5296471 |
| Publication time | Tue, 15 Sep 2026 14:31:00 +0200 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-09-15T13:01:52.742Z |
| Last seen | 2026-09-15T13:01:52.742Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | XgGL4g781m7m · 2 stories |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
Rights status (four layers)
WeSearch handling by dimension
| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
(function() { let windowUrl = window.location.href; windowUrl = windowUrl.substring(windowUrl.indexOf('?') + 1); let messageElement = document.querySelector('.shareableMessage'); if (windowUrl && windowUrl.includes('code') && windowUrl.includes('expires')) { messageElement.style.display = 'block'; } })(); OS PLATFORMS Microsoft account refuseniks have another way of installing Windows Has the good bork fairy paid a visit to Redmond? Richard Speed Richard Speed MICROSOFT ECOSYSTEM REPORTER Published tue 15 Sep 2026 // 13:31 UTC READ MORE Microsoft drafts feel-good AI model guidelines and wants your input 12 hours ago Microsoft patches Windows and Excel – breaks audio, remote access, and paste 1 day ago Microsoft anoints Rust as a 'Tier 1' internal language 4 days ago Azure SQL Data Sync…
Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at The Register.
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