Microsoft appears to be backtracking on a controversial move to lock Windows 11 users into their Microsoft accounts
Microsoft has revived instructions for Windows 11 (or 10) users who want to switch from a Microsoft account to a local account. This guide was previously unavailable.
If you haven’t been following this slightly odd series of events – which would hardly be surprising – to bring you up to speed, Microsoft has a couple of guides regarding Windows 11 and Windows 10 sign-ins. One of them describes how to switch from a local account to a Microsoft account, and the other shows you how to switch the other way, from a Microsoft account sign-in to a local account.
In June, however, Microsoft dropped the guide on how to switch from a Microsoft account back to a local account. Why? Well, that’s a good question, and we’ll get to that later.
Be that as it may, there were a number of Windows users who were not happy with this development. It also did not seem to fit the software giant’s agenda to encourage more people to use a Microsoft account.
If Tom’s Hardware However, reports that the guide to reverting to a local account in Windows 11 (or 10) has now been reinstalled (in this support document, if you scroll down).
That is clearly good news and Tom has also noted that an addition has been made in the form of a new guide for recovering the password via diskette. This is an additional piece of advice for users who are reverting to a local account.
This is important because if you forget your local account password, there is no way to get help (an online reset, like with a Microsoft account). You are stuck in the local creek without a password paddle, in short. However, if you have a password reset disk, as you might have guessed, that will help you get out of that messy local account situation, making a reset possible.
Check out this second guide here , and keep in mind that you’ll need a USB stick to use as a reset drive. Make sure to keep that USB drive somewhere safe, of course, after you’ve made a reset disk on it – and we’d even recommend making a second copy on a separate USB drive for added safety (just in case the first drive dies when push comes to shove).
Analysis: What was Microsoft thinking here?
As mentioned, much of the outrage over Microsoft’s decision to (temporarily) remove the local account guide revolved around the bad feeling that the company was simply trying to come up with a new measure to encourage the use of Microsoft accounts (or to keep Windows 11 users on their account logins, to be more precise).
Is that fair? Well, it’s certainly understandable, given that Microsoft has been ramping up its promotional efforts over the past year or two—some of which are outright advertisements, let’s be honest—around using a Microsoft account. (The latest move is to shove a thinly veiled ad into the Start menu, alas.) Additionally, Microsoft has also closed loopholes that allow people to keep a local account when installing Windows 11.
However, could there be a real reason why Microsoft pulled the guide – perhaps to rewrite it with the added info on password recovery? Well, you could argue that, but was there a need to remove the guide entirely (after it had been online for a number of years) to do so?
It’s a bit of a stretch, let’s be honest, but we don’t think the possibility can be ruled out. To us, though, it feels unavoidably like Microsoft removed the guide because it didn’t think it was a good idea to switch away from a Microsoft Account – given the benefits of the latter – and then put it back online after complaints and general outrage from some quarters of the Windows computing public.
Don’t get us wrong: there are indeed benefits to using a Microsoft account, as the company keeps claiming. But therein lies the problem – just as Edge is a perfectly good web browser but is constantly being promoted in all sorts of over-the-top ways, the fact that these products and services are repeatedly shoved in our faces makes us want to rebel and stop using them on principle. Maybe one day Microsoft will finally get that.
