A Tale of Two 24H2s (Premium)

I am writing this from the future. Well, a future. A near future that is only a baby step, or a half-step, toward a better future. Or something.

OK, I’m being coy here. Sorry. What I’m really doing is running Windows 11 version 24H2 courtesy of a Windows Insider Preview download of the latest available Dev channel ISO that I installed on an HP EliteBook and then upgraded to the latest build (as of this writing, at least). The result is familiar, of course, it’s just the next version of Windows 11 and not all that different, at least from a cursory, surface-level examination. But it also hints at bigger changes to come. And I am interested in both, the small changes that will arrive in the short term. And the bigger changes that are coming later this year.

I discussed Microsoft’s strategy with this release in Understanding Windows 11 Version 24H2 (Premium), but the short version is that there will be, in effect, two 24H2s, one that we get soon, most likely to accommodate the Qualcomm Snapdragon Elite-based PCs that will arrive later this month and in June, and the other a broader release that provides what we expect will be more full-featured and pervasive hybrid AI functionality throughout the system. The 24H2 I’m using, the version we can all test now via the Windows Insider Dev channel is the former 24H2, the more evolutionary, shorter-term 24H2.

You can argue that I’m a bit late to this. When Microsoft first revealed that it was, in fact, testing 24H2 in the Dev (and, at the time, Canary) channels in a rare and unexpected bit of transparency, I should have immediately enrolled a PC or at least a virtual machine (VM) in one of those channels. And you’re right, but I had just arrived in Mexico City at the time (early February) and was busy updating the Windows 11 Field Guide for a Moment 5 update that is only now fully deployed in stable (sorry, the General Availability channel). Plus, it didn’t seem like there was all that much going on with 24H2 at the time, nor did we then know that 24H2 would first arrive mid-year. So I did what I usually do when it comes to the book: I created a to-do list in Notion to list out and then prioritize the features coming in that release so I could cover them in the book as we got closer to the release.

But as we learned more about 24H2, not just the schedule but also the feature set, it became obvious that I’d need to get started on this. The final belated push came when a reader asked about Microsoft tightening the noose yet again on local accounts. And so late last week, I finally got started. Though, to fully understand the changes, I had to reinstall 24H2 from scratch multiple times to be sure what was happening and what we could do to work around this new behavior.

As you may recall, the initial version of Windows 11 didn’t offer those using the Home edition to create a local account during the initial Setup. And the second version, 22H2, did the same for Pro. In both cases, there were many workarounds, and I documented the best of them in the book in the Overcome Windows Setup Annoyances chapter. And when 23H2 arrived, I updated that chapter after ensuring that the existing workarounds still worked. They all did and still do.

But the first major change we see in 24H2 will alarm the power users in the audience: Microsoft has escalated its attempts to prevent local account sign-ins during initial Setup by blocking all of the workarounds that I previously documented. And that’s a problem, not just for the obvious reasons that impact anyone who cares about this sort of thing. But for me: My book is about to be out-of-date, and I need to figure this out.

Forced Microsoft sign-in warrants a place on my Windows 11 Enshittification Checklist, but as I noted in that post, this is a minor issue: It’s easy to work around, and anyone technical enough to feel that strongly about using a local account will figure out how to do so quickly. But with this new escalation, I need to rethink my severity issue for forced Microsoft sign-ins. This may move from being a minor issue into being something more serious.

Here’s the good news: You can still use a local account with Windows 11 version 24H2. That’s not going away. But how you do so is an open question. You can always use a Microsoft account for the initial sign-in and then create a new local account and switch to that (or, just convert the MSA to a local account in place). But what power users want, of course, is to not have to do that. They want to use a local account to sign in during the initial Setup and never look back.

Here, too, I have good news: It’s possible to do that. It’s just that the workarounds I previously selected and documented because they’re easy and/or seamless, no longer work. So we have to use a different workaround. And it’s not horrible, though this one only works with Windows 11 Pro: Instead of setting up for personal use (an MSA sign-in) during initial Setup, choose work or school. In the next screen, click “Sign-in options” and then “Domain join instead.”

And that gives us the screen power users want: You can enter a local account name and then, optionally, a “really memorable password” (yes, no password still works too). And you’re in.

From there, initial Setup proceeds normally. Will Microsoft escalate its war on local accounts further in the future? Almost certainly. Will it remove the ability to sign in with a local account all together? That’s a bridge to cross in the future, and while my guess is no, I know a lot of you have your finger poised above the “Eject” button and are casually if not actively researching Linux distributions. But let’s not overreact here. Not yet.

Speaking of guessing, I suspect we’ll find other workarounds, perhaps some that work with Windows 11 Home. We’ll get there.

Once you get into the Windows 11 version 24H2, not much appears to have changed. The appearance of the unified Microsoft Teams shortcut on the Taskbar is the most obvious difference, but that was telegraphed a few months ago. And as threatened, Spotlight is the new default wallpaper, which honestly makes sense for a lot of people.

But that’s about it at a high level: OneDrive still harasses to enable Folder Backup if you disable it, a few deprecated apps have been removed from the Start menu, and you can scroll through all the Quick settings tiles now. But mostly, it just looks and works like Windows 11 does today.

Looking beyond this initial release of 24H2, two big milestones are coming this year, and they could collectively kick off a new era for Windows or … not. The first, of course, is the Snapdragon Elite family of chips and the resulting first generation of PCs based on that platform. And the second is the full release of Windows 11 version 24H2, which should more fully take advantage of the AI-accelerated hardware in those and other AI PCs.

Unfortunately, this is an open question. What we’ve learned about the Snapdragon chips is nothing but good news so far, but as I keep saying, the real test will be actual shipping PCs used normally, and not benchmarks. So we’ll see how that pans out. My goal here is unchanged: While I’m sure I will have a chance to review different Qualcomm-based PCs, I will buy one for myself as well, preferably a 15-inch Surface Laptop. And we’re less than three weeks away from learning more about that: I’m attending Microsoft Build and the pre-Build Surface event and can’t wait to see what that brings.

As for the software, the initial reports we’ve seen for 24H2 aren’t all that exciting, honestly. AI Explorer? I don’t know. And I write that as an AI accepter, not an AI denier: AI is as inevitable as the mouse, the GUI, Internet connectivity, cloud, web apps, mobile, and any other successful platform shift we’ve endured in the PC space and the net impact will be positive despite some fits and starts. My question here is only whether it matters. Will these capabilities demonstrably improve Windows, and give it the air it needs for another decade of service? Or will they simply be there, and exist, and do nothing to entice customers to upgrade? I suspect most of us are worried it’s the latter. I’m trying to be optimistic here. But I just don’t know.

There is some version of a future where the Qualcomm platform succeeds and brings us the thin, light, fanless, and silent laptops we’ve wanted for so long, but AI doesn’t move the needle. That future is decidedly uncertain, but also an improvement over the current PC space. I hope we fare better than that, but it’s a possibility. As a world in which ChromeOS benefits even more than Windows from this transition. More on that in a future article, but once the idea gets in your head, it stays there, nagging.

No matter your views on any of this, we’re at a crossroads. And 24H2 is that place where the future heads in one of two (or more) directions, like a choose-your-own-adventure game where you’re not making the decisions. For people like me who crave certainty, this can be daunting, and scary. But it’s also exciting. There are positive outcomes to be had here if the chips just land correctly.

Here we go.