How Microsoft Turned Windows 11 Setup Into an Endurance Test

We wrote about this in August 2025, when Microsoft announced that Windows 11 would start installing quality updates during setup by default.

A year later, two things have changed - and one of them is that we got part of it wrong.

Here is where it actually stands.

Who that announcement was really for

It was not for you, unless you run an IT department.

The change applied to Microsoft Entra-joined and hybrid-joined machines set up through Intune's enrollment status page - the way a company hands out a hundred identical laptops. A PC you bought in a shop and switched on at your kitchen table was never covered by it.

That distinction got lost in a lot of the coverage at the time, including ours, and it matters: the setting behind it is one an administrator ticks, and it does not exist on a home machine.

The good news - there is now a skip button

Windows 11 setup still pauses to look for updates, on home machines as much as managed ones. That screen is where people get stuck.

It now offers Update Later. Choosing it sends you to the desktop and leaves Windows to fetch the updates in the background afterwards.

You are not skipping the patches, only the queue. They install once you are actually using the machine, which is where most people would rather wait.

The bad news - the part that actually got harder

In October 2025 Microsoft closed the shortcuts that let you finish setup with a local account.

The commands that used to do it are gone, and so is the registry switch behind them. On Windows 11 Home, setup now expects an internet connection and a Microsoft account, and it does not take no for an answer.

This is the genuine endurance test, and it is the one nobody gave a skip button.

What you can do about it

Three routes work, in rough order of effort.

• Sign in, then switch. Finish setup with a Microsoft account, then go to Settings, Accounts, Your info and choose to sign in with a local account instead. Slowest at the door, simplest overall.
• Build the installer yourself. Rufus can write a Windows 11 USB stick with the online account requirement removed and a local account created for you, from one dialog while it builds the drive.
• Take the setup screens over entirely. Flyoobe replaces the out-of-box experience with its own, and covers the account, the preinstalled apps and the AI features in the same pass.

Quick questions

If you would rather not hand your setup screens back to Microsoft at all, Flyoobe is a free download and runs without installing anything.

Set up a new Windows 11 PC recently? Tell us how long it took.