I recently bought some used Dell business laptops and, during the fresh installation of Windows 11 or the out-of-box experience (OOBE), I encounter an unknown company's logo that prompts me to log in to that business account. Unfortunately, I can't sign in with my own Microsoft account or find an option to 'join domain instead'. After some research, it seems the original company didn't unlink these laptops from their Microsoft Azure or Intune services before getting rid of them, which is why I'm seeing this issue. I know I can bypass the work/school login by pressing Ctrl-Shift-F3 to log in as an admin, but since I plan to donate these laptops to a charity that also uses Microsoft 365, I'm worried they might face problems when trying to add these laptops to their own organization. Will the existing cloud link to the previous company cause issues?
2 Answers
It's a good idea to reach out to the original company if you can find out their name. They might have just forgotten to remove the laptops from their Intune management. If you show them proof of your purchase, they might deregister the devices, and then you won’t have any further issues.
Check out Dell's support page about Autopilot if you haven't yet! You can deregister the laptops by signing in with your Microsoft account. Just follow the steps there to contact support and provide your purchase details. It can take some time due to wait times but it's worth a shot!
Thanks for the quick and detailed response to my first question here, I really appreciate it!