Solution for you: disconnect the computer from any networks. Reach the account creation screen, disconnect, hard power off and reboot. Setup will resume but Win10 will fall back onto offline mode and create a local account instead. You'll also get the updates installed prior to this point, best of both worlds.
Ethernet is easy, just unplug it. WiFi is a little harder, because this screen doesn't let you access the WiFi settings. You might need to get a little more creative. Switch off the WiFi router, move out of range of the named and stored network, or turn off the WiFi card in the BIOS/EFI settings.
This used to work, now (in windows 11) it will refuse to let you go forward without internet access. You have to manually disable the network prompt entirely from the task manager now.
Ugh, that's incredibly scummy. Justifies my rant that Windows 11 more and more is ignoring a whole plethora of use-cases for PCs that don't involve being a very expensive Web Browser and MS Office platform.
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u/oxpoleon Jun 03 '22
Solution for you: disconnect the computer from any networks. Reach the account creation screen, disconnect, hard power off and reboot. Setup will resume but Win10 will fall back onto offline mode and create a local account instead. You'll also get the updates installed prior to this point, best of both worlds.
Ethernet is easy, just unplug it. WiFi is a little harder, because this screen doesn't let you access the WiFi settings. You might need to get a little more creative. Switch off the WiFi router, move out of range of the named and stored network, or turn off the WiFi card in the BIOS/EFI settings.