Make Windows 7 or Vista Log On Automatically

If you are just running a home computer for gaming or something unimportant, you might not want to have to log in every single time you reboot your computer. There’s an easy tweak that will let you autologin.

First, we’ll need to get to the Advanced User Accounts Control Panel to get to this setting. I think there’s a registry tweak as well, but that seems like too much work.

Type in control userpasswords2 into the start menu search box, hit enter, and you’ll see this screen:

Uncheck the box that says “Users must enter a user name and password to use this computer”, and then hit Apply. You’ll see a username and password box. Enter in the appropriate information here and hit OK:

Note that these steps work perfectly on XP as well.

The Geek is the founder of How-To Geek and a geek enthusiast. This article was written on 01/25/07 and tagged with: Security, Windows 7, Windows Vista

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Comments (15)

1. February 27, 2007 10:06 am
   Hoang Tu

   Very useful
   Thanks a lot

2. March 18, 2007 12:00 am
   Chuck Nyren

   Thanks for this.

   However, it doesn’t seem to work when you hibernate. You still have to log on. Any workaround for that?

3. June 21, 2007 2:20 pm
   danih

   Hi!

   For hibernate/sleep; go to advanced settings for power saving schema, ther you can set that logon isn’t nessesary after sleep.

4. August 5, 2007 5:44 pm
   Enno Krebbers

   I found this in the help as well, but how do you do the reverse? Automatic logon seems to have been turned on on my machine since I installed Vista (on a new machine). I would prefer it be off since two of us use it and it would be helpful to have the so-called welcome screen to choose the user. The box to require a password is already unchecked (we don’t need that in our home). I can get no further dialog boxes giving me the option to turn on the welcome screen with user choice. The machine always starts as the user that was first created.
   Thanks in advance.

5. October 14, 2007 7:08 am
   Toby Adams

   Fantastic article, you can also get to it by typing “control userpasswords2″ from the run box.

6. January 18, 2008 12:03 pm
   VELPO

   Is there something similiar for XP?

7. February 23, 2008 4:40 pm
   paladin

   same as above is true for xp

8. February 27, 2008 4:37 am
   muriel

   It doesn’t work for me !!
   The screen “User accounts” does not have a box to be ticked “users must enter username and password to use this computer” ! I can’t find it anywhere!

   Can you help?

9. June 13, 2008 1:45 pm
   NeoMaster

   I had the same problem, but I ended up using regedit to get the box visible, then selected the correct account to login through ‘control useraccounts2′. Restarted and works great

   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon
   Modify the ‘AutoAdminLogin’ value to ‘1′ to enable the checkbox.
   The only other thing I needed was to change ‘DefaultDomainName’ AFTER I had set a user to auto login through ‘control useraccounts2′ since I had a local user and a domain user with the same name.

   BTW, I don’t take responsibility if you foobar your PC, so use at your own risk.

10. July 18, 2008 10:38 am
    Alvin

    You ought to change your instruction to send your advisee to start, run, then control…… I found the search didn’t find the program in index, but using run worked fine.

11. July 25, 2008 1:21 am
    Rain

    I cannot check the the box “logon isn’t nessesary after sleep”
    What to do about that?

12. September 23, 2008 8:08 pm
    hadlyever

    this article gets me halfway there. yes i dont have to enter a password, but i still have to click on the button to logon. how do i get windows to simply go straight to my desktop on startup and when it comes out of sleep mode?

13. September 23, 2008 9:37 pm
    jd2066

    @hadlyever: Goto Power Options in Control Panel, Click “Choose what the power buttons do” on the left, click “Don’t require a password” and click “Save Changes”.
    Note: If the password radio buttons are grayed out click “Change settings that are currently unavailable” and click Continue for them to appear.

14. February 7, 2009 6:15 am
    Arjan Salomons

    Just a note: This works perfectly on Windows 7, too!

15. April 26, 2009 7:56 pm
    Donald

    I had the same problem, but I ended up using regedit to get the box visible, then selected the correct account to login through ‘control useraccounts2′. Restarted and works great

    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon
    Modify the ‘AutoAdminLogin’ value to ‘1′ to enable the checkbox.
    The only other thing I needed was to change ‘DefaultDomainName’ AFTER I had set a user to auto login through ‘control useraccounts2′ since I had a local user and a domain user with the same name.

    BTW, I don’t take responsibility if you foobar your PC, so use at your own risk.

    DUDE, That works….
    THX….