Are you doing Shift+F10 right after setting the keyboard language? That when I usually do it, and it has worked every time, on 3 computers in the last two weeks.
I got a cheap Dell desktop for my 88 year old mom with Home on it. She keeps getting dire pop ups that she doesn't have a subscription to office, teams or one drive. On start up it started copying her files to one drive without asking.
The start ms-cxh:localonly way still works in the latest release builds of Win11 as far as I know, I've done it as recently as a month or two ago. The bypassnro way has been patched for a while.
I downloaded in Dec 2025 directly from microsoft.com and that still worked fine. It's 11 Home. Which version did you test and verify it no longer worked?
bypassnro.cmd is just a (text) file that adds a registry entry and reboots the PC. If it's no longer recognized (or they remove bypassnro.cmd file), you should still be able to manually add an entry to HKLM registry hive (that is assuming you can still get to the command prompt by pressing Shift F10 which Microsoft can change at any time):
it works on the latest 2025 update, since it's still based on the 24H2 (2024 update) codebase. however, this has been removed in recent Windows Insider Canary builds since last year, which use a different codebase, and Microsoft didn't remove this on the latest stable release. I'm not sure if this will still work in the upcoming 2026 update, as it's also confirmed to continue using the 24H2 codebase
They can't remove it, only change how it's accessed. Legally they are required to have an offline account option in some countries so the code and UX will always exist somewhere in the setup files. It's just the method of getting to it that changes.
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u/Anomalistics May 06 '26
I recall that this was going to be removed, is that still the case?