Elon Musk complains to Microsoft CEO over Windows 11 accounts

X/Twitter owner Elon Musk complained to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella about Windows 11 setup requiring a Microsoft account.

Windows 11 has been adopted by an increasing number of users over the last few years, with over 400 million people using Microsoft’s latest OS.

Users are prompted to create a Microsoft Account during setup and not everyone has been happy with that, leading some to find ways to get around the prompt.

Tesla co-founder Elon Musk recently learned about the prompt, and took to X to complain directly to Microsoft’s CEO.

Elon Musk complains about Microsoft accounts directly to CEO

In a reply to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella’s tweet about their recent partnership with Mistral AI, Elon Musk shared his complaints about the Microsoft account requirement.

“Satya, I don’t mean to be a pest, but please allow people setting up a new Windows PC to skip creating a Microsoft account,” he said. “This option disappears if the computer is connected to WiFi.“

“Also, even if you do want to sign up, it won’t allow you use a work email address and I only *have* work emails addresses!”

Despite making it seemingly required during setup, there are plenty of ways to get past the Windows 11 account creation.

One is by using a fake email, like example@example.com and the password asdf. Setup should then lead you to a prompt to create a local account.

This is commonly referred to as the banned email method, and has a few other variants available as well.

Twitter/X users hit Elon Musk’s post with a Community Note stating that an account is not required as well, but Musk has yet to respond to the comments.