Windows 10: OfflineInsiderEnroll: Become a Windows 10 Insider without a Microsoft Account

Anyone can join the Windows 10 Insider program to change the channel of a Windows 10 system from Stable to one of the available test channels. All Windows 10 Insider channels provide a glimpse of what is coming, and that may be of interest to system administrators and even some Home users.

Insider builds are development builds that may have bugs, missing functionality, and other issues. One of the requirements of joining the Insider program is that users need to have a Microsoft Account as it needs to be supplied during the joining. While it is easy enough to create a throwaway Microsoft Account, some users may prefer a simpler option, and one is provided by OfflineInsiderEnroll.

OfflineInsiderEnroll is a simple script to join the Windows Insider program on the machine it is executed on using a local account. It is still necessary to set the Telemetry setting of the system to Full as this is a requirement for receiving Windows Insider builds.

You find the Telemetry option under Settings > Privacy > Diagnostic & feedback.



Here is how it works in detail:

1. Download the latest version of the script from the project's GitHub website.
2. You can check the source in any plain text editor, e.g. Notepad before you run the script.
3. Right-click on the script and select "run as administrator" to run it with elevated rights. If you don't, you get an error message stating that the operation requires elevation.
4. The script displays the available Windows Insider Program rings that you may change. Select one of the rings by pressing the corresponding letter and the Enter-key afterwards.
5. If the machine never joined an Insider program before, you are asked to restart the computer to enable "Microsoft Flight Signing"; this is another requirement for joining the Insider program on the machine.
6. Insider builds are offered via Windows Update after the process completes.

How does it work? Here is the explanation taken directly from the GitHub project website:

This script takes advantage of undocumented TestFlags registry value. If this value is set to 0x20, all access to online Windows Insider services gets disabled. Because of this, we can set our own Windows Insider Preview configuration without being overriden by the contact to the service. Since Windows Update does not check if machine is actually enrolled to the program, you will get offered Insider Preview builds by just setting correct values in the registry.
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Closing Words


Windows Insider builds provide a glimpse of future versions of Windows; they may be useful to system administrators and other users who want to test new features and compatibility/stability in advance. Downside is that full Telemetry data is submitted to Microsoft regularly.

Now You: Have you joined the Insider Program? (Via Deskmodder)

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Windows 10 Tweaks

As you may already know, Windows 10 (as well as Windows 8) allow you to log in with a valid Microsoft account, instead of creating a local account that only works on your machine. However, you may prefer to keep a local account for privacy reasons. If you do, though, some Windows 10 features—like Cortana—may not work. Despite the default behavior, the Windows 10 Store is not one of them. You can still log in to your Microsoft account for just the Store without switching to a full Microsoft account. The process, however, is not terribly obvious. To do so, follow these steps:

• Launch the Store from your Start menu.
• Click the user icon next to the search box.
• Click “Sign-in” from the menu that appears.
• Choose “Microsoft account” and log in like normal.
• When the “Make it yours” box appears do not enter your password. Instead, click “Sign in to just this app instead.”

from Lifehacker

 

Strange Windows 10 User Account issue.

Unfortunately I had done those steps numerous reboots, it just, reappears for no good reason. The base account isn't even a Microsoft account, it's a local account.

I haven't quite tried the built in administrator account on W10, but so far in my experience on my own computer, the built in account seemed to have absolutely no more control than I did on my own.

It's just strange, I go in, it warns me twice about deleting the account, then it's gone. Reboot, and it's back?

EDIT: Just to specify, both command line and Netplwiz both say only HIS account exists on the computer, it doesn't list this rogue account. This is what I meant in my first post about the fact that even Windows doesn't seem to believe it exists, HALF the time. *Frown

 

Windows 10 Activation (Insider)

Hi!

I signed up in the windows insider program and got windows 10 free - the windows 10 insider preview updated to windows 10 pro.
Today i got another SSD and did a raid 0 on my system forcing me to do a clean install of windows but now it wont activate anymore.
Signing in with my microsoft account that was linked to the insider program didnt help.
Maybe i got this problem since i quit the insider program for several days and signed up again after i found out that my win 10 wont activate anymore.
Any ideas how to fix it?

Lauri