I agree, the encryption should be deliberate choice. And we’ve said nothing yet about the impact on performance.

You used to almost be forced to make a recovery CD or USB when encrypting a drive, now people don’t even know how ‘important’ the MS account actually is.

Bypassnro is the old method, no longer working since 24H2. I’ve tested this method on GitHub and it works for normal AND S-mode devices.

• Ctrl + Shift + J before selecting secondary keyboard layout (sometimes you need to click on the outside borders of the form so the dev console pops up)
• Type this (can use autocomplete): WinJS.Application.restart(“ms-cxh://LOCALONLY”)
• Setup with local account

All the time, then people get ran around in circles, are given a too technical explanation and give up more often than not.

The encryption is not inherently a bad thing, but forcing people into account creation is where the trouble starts. With piss-poor customer support as the cherry on top, this should never be allowed.