How do I create an account on Windows 10 without internet?

Question

As soon as I got Windows 10, I determined what domains were used for surveillance and/or were major annoyances and blocked them at the local DNS server. Among them was login.live.com, the blocking of which breaks Cortana (which isn't a big deal for me).

However, I'm trying to create a second account for someone else. Going to the account screen and clicking "Add someone else to this PC" brings up a white window. Searching this shows that window is supposed to ask for an email address, and therefore likely connects to login.live.com, breaking it. I can find no other method to create a new user.

Is there any way to create an account on a Windows 10 machine without having to go through Live?

Answer 1

You can create a local (non-Microsoft) account any time you want.

Command prompt way

Press Windows+X and choose Command Prompt (Admin) from the menu that appears. Accept the UAC prompt. Type net user USERNAME PASSWORD /add with USERNAME replaced by the desired user name and PASSWORD replaced with the user's initial password. (If you want spaces in the password, enclose it in quotes.) If you see The command completed successfully., the user account has been created.

Example: net user BenN secretsandlies /add
Example with spaces in password: net user BenN "varying degrees of treachery" /add

If you want to make the new user an administrator of the machine, do net localgroup Administrators /add USERNAME in an administrative command prompt. Example: net localgroup Administrators /add BenN.

Desktop GUI way

Run netplwiz. It's fairly intuitive; the Add button lets you add a new local user. If you created a user with the command prompt and want a nicer username for it (e.g. with spaces), you can select it here, choose Properties, and update the Full name field to change the display name.

MMC way

If you have the Pro edition of Windows, you can run lusrmgr.msc to get a non-appy user management GUI.

Final note

If you want to create a Microsoft account, you need a working Internet connection.