I have Windows 10 on a nine year old computer that had become a little glitchy until I figured out a fix. It is now running fine. But it’s old, will have to be replaced at some point, and cannot be upgraded to Windows 11.
I have never used the Cloud. In Windows 10, that was an option that I had to select, and I always specifically declined. I do not have anything sensitive on my computer, but I just don’t like the idea of Microsoft having everything automatically. Not that I distrust them or question that Cloud security will never be breached ... but I don’t trust them, etc.
I want to store my files locally, which I do on external hard drives that are not connected unless I am using them. These don’t do anything fancy. They are just big, dumb, thumb drives that mirror everything exactly as I have them on my desktop and don’t do any helpful rearranging or encrypting. Aside from a home fire that wiped everything out, I’m safe.
I’m not sophisticated enough to know what I don’t know, but I have seen several suggestions that Windows 11 will make full integration into the cloud automatic. Is this true? If this is the default option, is this something from which I can opt out, given that I am not a tech savvy user and don’t want to be fooling with tricky fixes?
Sorry that I did not notice your post a few days ago.
Although it can be very convenient if something bad happens to your local storage, I personally am annoyed by all of this cloud integration. I was doing some work on a laptop that we use for a computer controlled indoor bicycle trainer that was previously my wife's primary computer. Each time I would add programs to the desktop it would screw up her new computer's desktop. This was because by default “OneDrive”, Microsoft's primary cloud connection was “syncing” the two desktops.
I am not sure why a group of geniuses at Microsoft thought that it was a good idea to sync all of the desktops of computers on an account by default. These days most people use more than one computer, and they likely have different purposes for each. My wife became very annoyed because she did not understand what was going on with her new computer. All I had to do was turn off the syncing of desktops in OneDrive and it stopped doing it, but I got annoyed enough about this constant nonsense that I just uninstalled OneDrive all together on the older laptop.
And that is the primary answer that I think that you are looking for. If you do not want to worry about “Cloud Security”... just go into add/remove programs and uninstall OneDrive.
If you want to get really serious about it.. save all your data and do a clean install by downloading the ISO file for your operating system directly from Microsoft and load it into Rufus... I covered this pretty well in post #136. After you hit the start button to create your installation media check the box that says you want to create a “local” account, and check the box that says disable data collection, and while you are at it check the box that says disable bitlocker. (If you do not create a Microsoft account it is quite easy to lose your bitlocker keys and lose your data)