EDIT: The original topic was: A/B testing can feel like being gas lighted? because I wasn’t seeing it consistently. Now it seems like it’s a slow roll… I’ve seen it three times now.
Through the course of a given week I use probably something like 10 “devices”. (Where in this case devices may be real hardware or virtual machines.)
Earlier today I was connecting to a machine (via remote desktop) I had just powered on for the first time in about a week or so. During the login/connection process I got a full screen “pop-up” I have never seen before or since. It was basically a typical Microsoft passive/aggressive request fro me to stop using a local account and “wise up” to switch to an online Microsoft Account (MSA.) Had I know it was to be [seemingly] a one time event, I would have captured the screen.
Most of my devices are in a virtually identical configuration. I keep them up to date with current OS versions and patches. It seems very strange for it to have occurred on just one device. I now have to presume this is some sort of A/B test where a select number of units are requested to do something different. It kinda feels like Microsoft is gas lighting me. Anyone else experience anything like this (or maybe I really am going crazy)?
So it turns out maybe this is going to roll out to many (all?) machines, just slowly. Due to the out of cycle SMB patch I have rebooted a bunch of machines in the last few hours, and have been given the same screen a few more times. Here’s what I got:
Do any of your VMs have Windows accounts? I generally tune my machines to have as little to do with Microsoft as possible. (Disable Cortana and Windows Search going online, disable OneDrive, use only local accounts, mostly all the privacy settings set to off.)
They only have local accounts, no online accounts or services. They are mainly there as emergency administration machines, in case the servers go down or for testing stuff.
Hi. Is this just the usual screen we see when moving from an older version of Windows to a newer one? I think I saw this when I upgraded from Win 7 to 10? Or is it something else? I can ask MSFT if it’s new in some way… Thanks
Yes it does look just like the screen during a new setup (OOBE) but it is now occurring, on some select machines, in isolation. The machines are all running 1909 since it was first made available. It pops up during a user logging into the machine. I’ve encountered it very selectively so far, for whatever reason… I’d say on maybe 5% of my machines or VMs.
On one of my Windows 10 Preview VMs, running a version from a few weeks back, I just had an interesting experience. When I logged in, it gave me the appearance it was going to display the screen, but instead it showed a “Please Wait” type message with the round chasing balls animation, and then after a bit of time it went away and nothing further happened. It was like it was trying to calculate whether it wanted to nag me, then realized I was using a MS Account so that I could be in the Preview Program and thus didn’t need to bother. Very strange.
Yep. Sounds like a “helpful suggestion” (ad/nag notification) from Microsoft that is meant to try to discourage folks from setting up offline accounts. Expect people will see more of this. Luckily, you can just close out of it. MJ
