How to Configure Windows XP & Vista Auto Login to Windows
For security purpose, this is a best practice that users have to key in their username and password for them to use the pc where share among the users. But some of the users will try to make their windows auto login after a reboot, because it will make them more easy and also the faster way for them to run or launch the program in the windows rather then they need key in the username and password. For Users who are using Windows XP and Vista, below is the tips and steps on how to make them auto login by modified the registry.
- Run the registry editor
- Drill down to this registry key: “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon”
- Check the four values as AutoAdminLogon, DefaultUSerName, DefaultPassword and DefaultDomainName. Change it accordingly.
AutoAdminLogon - A string value. Yes a string value. That is set to 0 or 1. If the value is 1, then the next time windows boots it will attempt to login with the credentials provided in the values shown below.
DefaultUserName - Username used to automatically login with.
DefaultPassword - Password used to automatically login with. Careful here. This is left in the registry unencrypted and easily read by anyone with an administrator account
DefaultDomainName - The domain name used when automatically logging in. Set to the name of the current computer name if the machine is not joined to a domain.
For users who are not familiar in registry, I suggest they use WindowsAutoLogin tool to configure their Windows auto login. WindowsAutoLogin is a free tool created by IntelliAdmin that will help users to configure everything in registry, users just have to keyin the username, password and domain one time and it will auto configure for it. This free tools currently support Windows 2000, XP and Vista.
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November 14th, 2007 at 12:46 am
there is a software tool to configure Windows autologon is LogonExpert, instead of keeping password as plain text in registry it encrypts password by AES 256bit
June 13th, 2008 at 10:30 am
Autologon is slow and useless. You shouldn’t have to pay for this. This free one rocks!