Windows 11 local account

"That's a problem if you place a higher premium on your privacy than the convenience of having your settings and files synchronized across multiple computers you might log into. "

I'm happy with the convenience, so it's not bollox (as you ever so genteely put it).

"It's an even bigger problem if you're setting up a PC for someone else, such as a relative, or to donate to charity. You don't want another person having to log in as you and then getting access to your data."

The obvious thing is to set up a brand new account.

If you're setting up a PC for someone who needs it done for them, then there's a huge advantage in them having at least some of their stuff backed up to the cloud.

The usual workflow in such cases is to install a fresh OS, create an account for Auntie Flo, install whatever apps she needs, then hand the machine over saying "your username is 'flo' and your password is 1234".

How do you do this if it insists on a cloud account? Let's assume she already has a cloud account and you don't know the password (because that would give you access to all kinds of personal stuff). You can login with your cloud account, install the apps, but what then? If you hand it over like that, she needs your cloud account password. If you create her a new account once logged in as you, traces of your account remain on the machine (various data synced over, like contacts etc). If you do a factory reset, all the apps are gone and you're back to square one.

I think you might be able to set up a cloud account initially, then set up a second local account, then nuke your cloud account, then create a local account for Auntie, but it's a massive PITA. And I wouldn't want to guarantee that deleting your cloud account has securely wiped all the personal data safe from being undeleted.

Theo

I am starting to get messages that there was a problem logging on on one of my Windows 10 machines. I have always logged on with local user/password so I don't know if this is just MSFT wanting a picture of my todger?

If she already has a cloud account, you ask her for her password. Leaving aside that she probably won't know it, she then trusts you to respect her privacy, or she doesn't. If she doesn't, you tell her that unfortunately you can't help her.

By definition, if you set her PC up for her, with all her 'stuff' on it, then at some stage of the process you are bound to be in a position to see her 'stuff'.

That's regardless of whether her 'stuff' is in the cloud or not backed up at all and you transfer it from an old PC.

The alternative is you do as you said above, and you hand her a machine with a new account, and it's her business to get hold of her old data and transfer it.

I noticed that to get the extended Win10 security support without paying, you need to either have 1000 MS Brownie points, however you get them, or to sync your settings etc.

So we can put an approximate price on how much MS is selling this information for..

You can exchange points for vouchers, and on that basis I value 1000 points at about 60p.

The cash price appears to be 30 USD + any tax due.

The options are £25.

Earn 1000 MS Rewards (which is dead easy).

Pay nothing at all (neither cash nor points), but set your account to synchronise settings with MS. (You can do this temporarily, then unsync.)

As I already synchronise stuff, that's what I chose.

Me too. I have several PCs and the syncing of data is between is really usefull...

... but this article is IMHO really bad, as no where does it mention that should you do this the only copy of your data is on your PC. When it dies, because it gets frazzeled in a thunder storm, or the SSD runs out of write cycles, or someone nicks it, all the stuff you have on there will vanish, probably irretrievability.

. so whilst I am sure you will all shout "we do backups" that is not true of the great unwashed.

I personally applaud MS for this move. The stories about loosing photos of passed loved ones because of mishaps like this greatly outnumber those of folks who have lost access to One Drive,but of course knocking big tech is newsworthy, but Mrs Trellis of North Wales losing a video of here honeymoon isn't.

Dave

Hmm. I'm nervous of *big Tec* commercialising One Drive/Cloud etc. storage. Why would they fund data storage for user benefit alone?>

Most things in life have pluses and minuses, and you have to weigh those up. Can I ask whether you use Gmail or another free email service?

I'm not convinced that personalised advertising is such a bad thing, but YMMV.

The Cloud is just as easily deleted as anything else.

Take the report a couple days ago, someone had their AWS account deleted by an oaf of an IT person. And Amazon attempted to cover it up (that it was their mistake and not a non-compliance of the account owner).

The backups I keep in my home, are under my control, and nobody deletes them except me.

There are two problems with Cloud accounts:

The handling of data by the Microsoft implementation is clumsy, and a Cloud provided by someone else (Dropbox) might be easier to understand.

Google has Google Takeout, which "takes your goods, and puts them in a ZIP for download to your home". That is a way of verifying exactly what is on the Cloud in that case. Microsoft does not offer a Takeout option. Even after you have unlinked an account on your computer, you can still log into your account on the Microsoft end, and view your files there.

The free storage on Microsoft, is I believe, 5GB or so. The paid version (typically with an Office rental) can be 1TB in size. Do the computation of how long it would take to transfer an actual 1TB of content, back towards your computer, before you do that :-) If you have a decent fiber broadband, nothing to worry about there.

Paul

Like I said newsworthy because of its rarity. People lose photos and videos due to hard drive failure every day. Harddrives, SSDS and USB memory sticks fail all the time.

Like I said, you are the exception. I would say far too many have no backup. Also as for "under your control" are the always visible? Could they be encrypted by malware.

In what way is it clumsy? I have several PCs linked to my oneDrive account. Dangerous I know. On some, which I don't use very often OneDrive only downloads limited data. On some others everything gets downloaded.

Thats good. Especially when some nasty gets onto your computer and encrypts the local copy.

It takes about a couple of days. It does it in the background, but it downloads the whole tree so if there is a file you need you can force a download.

Dave

Or Install Win 11 Pro

Select Setup for Work or school, and when prompted for a MS account, select Sign in options, then "Domain join instead" - it now takes you to a local account setup.

Just beware that windows will try and remember any time it gets a sniff of a MS account and use it for other stuff. Typing "Email & Accounts" into the search on the start menu will find any that it has attached to your account.

The proper way is to setup windows in Audit mode. Then you can install software and drivers, tinker etc, and finally reset it so that the next boot will go through the normal OOBE.

You might want to choose who's cloud. Especially as MS announced the other day that they cannot guarantee the physical location of cloud data, which could place your data under (for example) US jurisdiction. That (for some people) will put them at legal risk if they process personal data belonging to UK citizens.

They have just changed the requirements for EEA countries to no longer require syncing of data to the cloud. However you still need to use a MS account to sign up for it, and need to login to it at least once every