Guide: How to skip Windows 11 network setup screen

Operating Systems Windows 11/Server 2025
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No doubt a lot of people are annoyed at the “mandatory” addition to the Windows 11 Home setup where you are forced to get a M$ account, but appearances can (and in this case, are) deceptive. You can in fact skip this process and have a local account just like on Windows 10 and every other version of Windows there’s ever been and here’s how to do it;

  1. At the screen during the Windows 11 setup where it tries to corner you into making an online account press Shift+F10, this will bring up Command Prompt.

  2. In the Command Prompt windows type; taskmgr then hit enter

  3. In the Task Manager window click “More Details”, scroll under the “Background processes” until you find “NetworkConnectionFlow”. Select it, then click “end task”.

Now just go back to the Windows 11 setup and you’ll see you can now just enter a user name for the account and continue with the setup. That’s it.

Alternatively you can also just press Shift+F10 and at Command Prompt type; taskkill/F/IMoobenetworkconnectionflow.exe then hit enter, all done.

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On clean installations, been using Shift+F10, oobe\bypassnro

it automatic reboots to new OOBE experience, now with button option to bypass connections.

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AFAIK the methods I posted work for both clean and major update installs ;o)

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PSA: With the latest W11 version (22H2) this method no longer works, even physically removing any wireless adapters will not allow you to skip the network setup BS.

Instead at the network setup screen press Shift+F10 and in Command Prompt type; OOBE\BYPASSNRO then hit enter. Ironic in how MS trying to make network setup hard to skip they actually made it easier lol.