[scandinavegan]

I bought two different laptops in January and installed Windows 10. I managed to reach the local account option by entering a Gmail address without a connected Microsoft account when it first asked me to log in during initial setup. At the failure page they added a local account button that wasn't on the previous screen so that I could set up a local offline account.

It still keeps nagging with a notification saying that my Windows installation is not fully secure since I haven't added a Microsoft account. I've disabled that notification, but it may have disabled all notifications from the settings part of Windows, I'm not sure.

[zrobotics]

This is odd, considering it's a Microsoft device, but the Surface Pro I bought in January had a local account option available, and I connected to the update servers before creating my local account. However, around the same time I accidentally converted the local account on my gaming desktop into a Msft account when signing into 365 to setup onedrive. I didn't realize I was doing that until my account photo on the login screen changed. I can still login to the PC with my old password (Msft account p/w is the typical 20 char random string from my password manager).

Tip- you can disable the security nag notifications in defender settings individually. There is a screen with different categories of 'threats', and you can turn on/off warnings individually. You probably don't want those notifications entirely disabled, since it is pretty useful as anti-virus, but the account and backup notifications are obnoxious.