Sign in User Account Automatically at Windows 10 Startup  

Snugglebugs said:

You were right. That box was checked! How many thousand more options are set wrongly on Win 10?
Unchecked now. Cross fingers!

Didn't help. Still needs p/w to restart.

I left it and overnight the fairies fixed it!
But seriously I think that changed screensaver setting needed me to click on Apply which I forgot to do.
Today most of the problems have gone away. I will work through your later message 229 and check all your questions and reply with the answers later today.

Brink said:

Just to verify, did you:

• Add a PIN to your account
• At startup: Uncheck the Users must enter a user name and password to use this computer box in netplwiz
• At wakeup: Set require sign-in to "Never"
• At resume: Unchecked On resume, display logon screen

Answers
Acer2020

1. no and it still does not have one according to signin options
2. is unchecked
3. was set to when waking up from sleep - now changed to never
4. was checked (see note) but before answering this I had changed it to unticked which did help

Lenovo2019
Same settings but that has always been able to boot without PIN

My General Notes
Re screensaver - I never noticed that Resume box and as it appeared to be a Sleep setting causing problems, I never looked to find a problem with the screensaver!
In fact, settings for wait times on screensaver, display off, or sleep are not separate as they should be but interfere in different ways.
For example, I had SS at 10 minutes, screen at 20 minutes and sleep at 30 minutes.
The saver came on at 10 after last HID interaction. But the display turned blank after a further 20 making it 30 total! As there is no message to state what event has been triggered, there is no way of knowing if the display is blank because of the 10 + 20 time, or the 30 time.
What doesn't help is that the screen can be blank because it is being told to display black, or because the video signal has gone off so there is noting to display. Thus you can't see if it is in the display off or the sleep situation and that confuses fault finding.

Anyway, until further notice(!) it is now behaving the way I want it.

Thanks for help.

Brink said:

Great news.

It was, until 2021-11 and Feature update 21H2 earlier this week when it reverted to needing sign-in when restarting, and the same every day since!
I have managed to reduce it to password only but no better. I have just gone through all the steps above (#232) and will see what happens. I will also disable gpedit convenience PIN sign-in setting. The Disable Hello in Settings seems to have vanished!

I wish there was some way of LOCKING settings that work instead of being at the mercy of Update whims.

Brink said:

I hear you. It stinks when an update resets some setting(s) back to default.

I have tried to check all the ones I tried in September and I will give it a good nights sleep and see if it wakes up tomorrow refreshed

- - - Updated - - -

Snugglebugs said:

I have tried to check all the ones I tried in September and I will give it a good nights sleep and see if it wakes up tomorrow refreshed

Refreshed, no.
Changed, yes
Now the Welcome page says Wrong password BEFORE I have entered anything at all!

- - - Updated - - -

I have found a setup windows that has lots of logon options. I wonder if one of those needs changing? Its called secpol.msc

- - - Updated - - -

Or maybe this one?

1. Navigate to the path: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\PolicyManager\default\Settings\AllowSignInOptions.
2. In the right panel, double-click on the DWORD entry named value and set it to 0.

When all steps are finished, reboot your computer and check whether the Windows Hello is disabled

There are so may switches that its difficult to understand what is sensible or just disastrous1

Brink said:

Usually, that means either the password (not PIN) was entered incorrectly in netplwiz or you changed the password or computer name after setting up netplwiz causing netplwiz to need updating again.

That's odd. I hadn't intentionally altered any passwords but when I use the Manage Passwords page there it states that Windows Credentials have all been modified today.
There doesn't seem to be any way that I can see the password listed there to check it. The number of dots does not match the length of any password I use. And, which password does it refer to? Presumably my MS account.

The only change I have made using netplwiz is to untick the box to allow logon without a password. I did that a while ago and confirmed it with the MS P/W

By the way, when the screen shows the logon page there is no box for P/W, just the message. If I press Enter, only then does the box appear and then I use the MS P/W without problem, except that I don't want to have to use it!