Bootup without login

I have a Windows 10 Pro machine that is in a secure location. Using the User Accounts settings (netplwiz) , I unchecked the option, "Users must enter a user name and password to use this computer." For over a year now, with Windows 10, that has worked just fine. The machine booted up without ever displaying the login screen or requiring credentials. Today, I rebooted, and it did and installation of the latest software.

Now, it requires a login every time I boot up. I double-checked, and "Users must enter a user name and password to use this computer" is not checked in the User Accounts settings. Apparently, Windows 10 now just ignores that setting.

Is there any way to make the machine boot up without requiring a login? Once again, Microsoft's software engineers have worked overtime to make Windows less usable, more inefficient and to disable anything that the user might want. Any suggestions to thwart their efforts will be most appreciated.

Have a look through the following tutorial and follow the steps in Option 1 to turn sign-in off again on the user account you use. For some reason there are times when you need to go through this process again.

Sign in User Account Automatically at Windows 10 Startup

Actually, I had already tried turning the option on and off as described in Option 1 in the link you provided, at least three times. That didn't work, so I tried it a couple of more times when I got your reply just to make sure, and it still didn't work. However, the article did give me inspiration. I went in with regedit and did the change that they suggested (sure enough netplwiz hadn't made the critical changes to the Registry). Viola! That worked. Score 1 for Microsoft Software Engineers. How many home users would understand the archaic dysfuntional Registry enough to go in and make those changes? Once again, they've managed to turn Windows into something that requires a fulltime technical person to make it work.

Just for the record, what was lacking was that there was no DefaultPassword entry in the relevant section of the Registry. I had entered m password in the User Accounts dialog each time I turned the requirement for entering a login off. Apparently, now, the dialog is not passing that back to the Registry.

Thanks for the feedback. Option 2 is less secure as the tutorial explains because the password is actually shown in the registry rather than being encrypted in the Credentials Manager.

This suggests to me that there was something awry with the Credentials Manager but I do not know how you can fix that.

Thanks. I had run sfc /scannow before I did the Registry thing, and it found no integrity violations. I'm not sure if sfc actually checks Credentials Manager.