The lock screen feature of Windows 8 and 10 is interesting, but it seems like something that makes more sense on a tablet PC. Thankfully it's easy enough to disable if you're using a desktop or laptop instead.

Related: How to Disable the Lock Screen on Windows 10 or Windows 11

Update: Unfortunately, Microsoft disabled these tweaks in the Anniversary Update of Windows 10, so this tweak will only work on Windows 8 or Windows 10 Enterprise. Also note that this only works in the Professional versions of Windows 8. If you want to do it with a registry hack, you can follow our tutorial on how to do that.

Disabling The Lock Screen

The first thing you need to do is to open the Local Group Policy Editor by pressing the Win + R key combination to bring up a run box, then type gpedit.msc and hit enter.

Now you will need to drill down into:

Computer Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> Control Panel -> Personalization

On the right-hand side, you will need to double click on the "Do not display the lock screen" setting.

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Change the radio button from "Not Configured" to "Enabled", click apply and you're good to go.

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That's all there is to it.