Hmm on the last few installs I’ve done (both Win 10 and 11) I just lead the installation to believe I’ll be doing a corporate/domain install & it always lets me create a normal user/password after that. Not necessary to unplug any ethernet/internet or anything of the sort.
It’s always worked for me both at work and at home.
Just to be sure, I spun up a virtual machine to install Windows 10 22H2, here are the steps I went through:
Boot into the Windows 10 installer, jump into the installer & run through all the initial install steps until we get to the OOBE (Windows 10 out-of-box-experience post installer)
Select your Region, click Yes
Select your Keyboard Layout, click Yes
Skip Second Keyboard Layout (unless you want one)
Let it keep going, it might restart (mine did)
At the Account screen select Set Up For An Organization then click Next
At the “Sign In With Microsoft” screen select "Domain join instead"
At the “What name do you want to use?” screen enter your new Windows user account name and click Next
At the Password screen enter a password for your Windows user account and click Next
Re-enter your password and click Next
Set up a security question/answer - Or do like I do & fake them all e.g. select a security question then enter random gibberish alphanumeric text - and click Next
(do the same for all 3 security questions)
Select your Privacy settings then click Accept
Accept or skip any customizations you want (I usually Skip)
For Cortana you can click “Not Now” or “Accept” up to you
Done! You now installed Windows 10 Pro without a Microsoft Account.