Hello all, new member here.
I need to reinstall W10 on a desktop with local accounts only, 1 admin, one regular. The users don't need all of the extra Microsoft stuff. The reason is that once again my mom downloaded a remote access program from a scam PC help pop-up. I want to severely restrict the user account as to what it can be installed, ect.
You have Offline account option at the bottom left corner of setup screen while clean installing Windows 10.
Hello @triniphen, and welcome.
As FreeBooter posted, you can select to set up a local account while doing a clean install at step 23 below.
Clean Install Windows 10
Welcome to the Forum @triniphen
Please edit your profile with ALL your hardware specs. It will help us to help you
System Specs - Fill in at Ten Forums
Reset BIOS or load defaults.
Set Disk mode to AHCI, not RAID
Select OS mode = UEFI or Select OS mode = other + UEFI (depends on BIOS).
Disable fast boot and secure boot (you can turn it on after installation)
Windows can be installed in two ways: Legacy-MBR or UEFI-GPT
To install as Legacy-MBR you must boot the installation drive as Legacy
To install as UEFI-GPT you must boot the installation drive as UEFI.
If you have a UEFI BIOS, you should install as UEFI-GPT
Detach any other drives (SATA or Power cable) from the MB.
During POST, press F12(?) to launch the boot menu. You will see two options for the USB drive. USB UEFI (Name) and USB (Name). Select USB UEFI (Name) if you want to install as UEFI-GPT or select USB (name) if you want to install as Legacy-MBR.
Go to install and delete ALL partitions on the main drive till you have one and only one unallocated space and then proceed.
If you don't want to use MS account, don't enable updates or connect to the internet during installation.
To restrict what the user can do the way you want you must have Win 10 Pro
The user account you create during the Clean install will be an Admin user account.
You then use that to create any other user accounts you want [such as the Standard user account you mention - "Standard" not "Regular"].
Denis
I'd block the pop ups using uBlock Origin which is an extension (add-on) for Firefox and others. Add the malware filter in the options as well... I'd stay away from Chrome...
I have my parents use the browser in Sandboxie. That'll help keep malicious JavaScript and whatnot at bay and stay in the sandbox. One of the things I personally like about Sandboxie is if something downloads Sandboxie alerts you to Recover. Don't do so unless you expect a download to recover.
I use Sandboxie Classic though. The newer version is massively overbloated and even more complicated. Sandboxie is now free and open source software found at Github. Once upon a time it was not. It may be cumbersome to deploy and use at first though. But for users they just launch the browser as usual and no nothing otherwise. My parents are pushing 70 and it's not been an issue. Though, printing can be, so you have to configure that in Sandboxie...
Git: Global Information Tracker.
Thank you all. I used to do XP installs all the time and never had to deal with the W10 "experience" which is irritating how the install pushes you in that direction. I'm doing this reinstall because my mom for the 5th time has downloaded a remote desktop program from so scammer, but the first on W10.
To save yourself the trouble of clean installing.. why not use 3rd party disk imaging...regularly and routinely - of at least all Windows partitions. Then when things go wrong.. even if the system disk fails.. you can simply restore an image and have everything back as was and save yourself a whole lot of time.I'm doing this reinstall because my mom for the 5th time has downloaded a remote desktop program from so scammer
Lacking the options in Pro via the Group Policy Editor to restrict users, consider e.g.
Install-Block from Bash Software
to prevent installing programs.
Caveat- not tried it- just found it as a possible example
You can prevent ANY installation with a simple registry hack:
How to Block Users From Installing Software in Windows 10/8/7 [Tutorial] - YouTube
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