It came to light in the Windows 10 build 19033 that the option for automatically signing in had disappeared.
Automatic login is one of the more useful features as it enables quick sign-in on all devices. All the devices are encrypted and the master password is entered during the boot sequence before the operating system loads.
And its proved useful in Enterprises where user accounts are on devices that are not linked to specific users.
While it might appear, at first glance to be disabled, administrators can disable the requirement for login details during sign-on but when it was tested, by doing this:
- Open Run (Windows key + R) and type netplwiz; press Enter
- A window will open listing all manually created user accounts
- A checkbox beside “Users must enter a user name and password to use this computer” tells whether a user has to input a password (box checked) or not (box not checked)
The option was no longer displayed and it was assumed that Microsoft had got rid of it. On further testing, it appeared it had only been removed for some users, not all.
It was thought that Microsoft was doing A-B testing but that turned out to be incorrect. The truth is, that checkbox availability is linked to Windows Hello:
- If you have enabled Windows Hello, the box is gone
- If you have disabled Windows Hello, the box is there.
If you want to have automatic sign-on enabled, you must ensure that Windows Hello is disabled first.
There is an option still available but you would need to edit the Registry and it isn’t a very secure method because the password is input into the Registry in plain text.
Still, if you are confident enough to have a go and you really want to, here’s how:
- Launch the Registry editor and find HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon
- Find the string value for AutoAdminLogon – if it isn’t there, create it – and set the value to 1
- Do the same with DefaultUserName and input the username for automatic sign-on
- And repeat or DefaultPassword, inputting the password
Do NOT do this if you are not confident as messing around with Registry values can backfire on you and mess up your system.
Do you use automatic sign-in or do you prefer to do it manually?
