Sunday, October 20, 2013

Windows 8.1 auto login - checkbox missing

So today I updated to Windows 8.1.  After the install process was complete, Windows asked me to log in with a live account.  This is not a huge issue because I do have an account, I just don't use it.  The irk here is that apparently this is a required step.  There is no skip, ask me later or die in a fire button.  So what is my live.com password? The password is 12 random characters long and I need access to LastPass to figure out my password.  But, remember there is no skip button :(

After getting all logged in and doing the first restart, guess what Windows wants me to do, again.  Back to the same issue, so after digging up the password again (which I promptly make insecure by writing down on a note card in big black permanent ink) I log back in again.

So I figure I can just turn this option off right?  A quick search on Google tells me exactly what a I need to do, just uncheck a checkbox and provide credentials.  Problem solved right?  WRONG!!!

So what im looking for is the checkbox here:
 
But, my screen looks like this:


What the hell where is it?  Google is of no help, I keep ending up on the same thing that tells me to check the checkbox.

Long story short fix this issue and make the checkbox show up by doing the following:
  1. Enable the Administrator account by running net user Administrator /active:yes from an elevated command prompt.
  2. Login with the Administrator account.
  3. Run control userpasswords2 from the run command
  4. Bam! The chceckbox shows up.  Uncheck the "Users must enter a user name and password to use this computer" checkbox.
  5. Press apply and enter credentials for the user you want to automatically be logged in.
  6. Restart and you should be logged in without the need to provide credentials.
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2 comments:

  1. KattisMarch 6, 2014 at 5:50 AM

    This didn't work for me, the checkbox didn't show up :( I switched to a local account instead

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  2. Panamint JoeApril 30, 2014 at 4:00 PM

    My computer was off for several weeks and a couple of days ago I turned it on. Windows 8.1 Pro downloaded and installed hundreds of megabytes of "updates", which took many hours, so I left it running overnight. It is fully patched as of April 28, 2014, and the checkbox in control userpasswords2 is gone for good. It doesn't show up even for a user running with administrator privileges.

    It looks like Microsoft has changed the behavior of the operating system so it remembers the last user logged in when the machine is shut down. If you were logged in as "Administrator", you'll see the Administrator login with a password box; if you were logged in as "John Smith", you'll see the "John Smith" login with password box.

    The upshot of this is that it isn't possible to force a default user for the login screen after the machine is started. To set a quasi-default user in Windows 8.1, one must switch to the desired account and shut down the machine from that account.

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