My husband works for Microsoft and we had some fun fights about this.

It’s my damn computer, I have the right to run it how I please. So freeing to be able to just use my computer and check my work email without worrying about what docs or anything are getting synced where. I’m dual boot until I get a Quicken solution running properly, but that’s literally the only thing I still need from Windows at this point. I run Ubuntu now and this is exactly why. Microsoft wants you in a Microsoft account, period, full stop. I say no, but they keep defaulting to do that, and it’s a matter of time before I’m typing and don’t stop in time to prevent that default force option from being accepted without my consent. Unfortunately, I found that with a local windows account but even using the browser to log in to work outlook to check email, or trying to run only teams locally, windows keeps trying to give my computer control to my work.

And since all windows 10 is being slowly force-pushed to 11, if you’re on Home with a local account and won’t make a Microsoft account, you are screwed. On windows 11, this is only possible on Pro, a more expensive sku. If you don’t have a Microsoft account and you never log in to a Microsoft account, for email or work even, it won’t ever hook you to one drive. You can create a local account if you don’t have internet on install. This would involve reinstalling windows and refusing to connect to the internet until after windows is installed. You can set options to stop doing that but they’ll get changed back in a week or a month or whatever. They just keep putting it back and setting all the defaults to use it.

Completely disable microsoft onedrive