Set Up Windows 11 Without Microsoft Account

When Microsoft banned computer hardware that didn't have the TPM chip and therefore would not run Windows 11, I said, That's it. Fool me once Microsoft. shame on you... What's to stop Microsoft from doing this again in the future? I began looking at alternatives and decided that running Windows 11 as a Virtual Machine (VM) inside a product called Parallels Desktop on a Mac was the way to go. I'm one who always assembled his own PC's and keeping my budget at $1000 for the box (no new monitor, keyboard, mouse, external devices) BUT, if I was going to run Windows 11 inside of my new Mac, the Mac had better be on the robust end of the spectrum. My former Macs have always had 8 to 16GB of RAM which was adequate for my usage. But since Windows 11 doesn't thrive until reaching 16GB, I decided that 32GB should be fine with this new Mac (it's perfect) Next, storage. VM's require a lot of storage space. I'm running a Windows 11 VM, Mac Sonoma (this is an additional Mac VM) and a Linux VM. My Mac now has 850GB free on a 2TB drive. Yes, get the 2TB storage! I have no storage insecurity which counts for a lot. Perhaps I'll try moving the VM's to external storage someday but I don't have resources for trying experiments now - using RAID arrays, etc. So now I have an expensive Mac (it's all relative, I know). I justify it by saying that I was going to have to buy my $1000 Windows box anyway plus I wanted the new Mac silicon. Installing Parallels Desktop and the Windows 11 VM is mostly an automated experience. Everything is fast.

I had two laptops that were no more than three years old and after the upgrade to Microsoft windows 11 they just seem to slow down. The simple fix was to put two of these drives in the two computers and then clean load Microsoft windows 11 - 64 bit The difference was unbelievable it was almost like a totally different computer and also with a new operating system. These are such a wonderful set of drives and do just fine performance and affordability

I was amazed that it booted right up, synced to my microsoft account, and loaded my preferred software programs seamlessly. It's been running smoothly every since, too.

Is this compatible with Windows 11? How is it different from the p50?

I highly recommend Windows 11 Pro.

I love this motherboard, it's got amazing features and was pretty simple to set up. The biggest downside is that for Windows 10/11 to be able to install the drivers for the wifi card to work, you need an internet connection. But you can't get an internet connection over wifi since Windows can't use the wifi card by default. Maybe this isn't a problem if you have a working windows installation with the latest updates but I was doing a complete clean install from the official Windows 11 USB Drive and I needed to plug the computer into ethernet to be able to set up the wifi. This was pretty inconvenient as my router was on a different floor of my house... Also the audio drivers that are by default installed comes with some bloatware software that is really difficult to fully remove. It also has some way to automatically restart itself and stay in your system tray (as a shortcut to re-download the software suite) even if you uninstall it and remove it from startup applications. This type of behavior from software rubs me the wrong way and really makes me reconsider buying ASUS motherboards in the future if this type of software is necessary to use them. This all being said, once I got everything set up and installed, it's worked flawlessly for me.

STURDY AND EASY TO SET UP.

I use this to make system images on Win 7 Pro... before I do windows update (just to be safe, because, you know, microsoft).  Priced right and works for me.  Generally takes two of these to make a system image of my C: drive with 115 GB on it.  Good safety net.

Plug and play with Windows 11. Extremely simple and easy to use.

Easy installation good product for windows 11 and others