Autologon Trouble After GPO Change

Auto logon (autologon, autologin, auto login) unexpectedly didn’t work on about 400 machines overnight.  Ouch!  No changes were made to the systems that related to login rights, and the autologon values were unchanged in the registry.

 

It was other changes, namely computer policies, delayed the boot process.  The delay was enough to allow the screen saver to come on during the application of computer settings.  Having the screen saver up before auto logon seems to prevent it.

 

You can reproduce the problem by setting HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Desktop\"ScreenSaveTimeOut"="60" (1 minute) and linking in a long computer startup script.

 

HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Desktop\ applies to the console session pre-login.

 

To prevent the Screen Saver from interfering with your autologon settings, make the following Registry Changes:

 

[HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Desktop]

"ScreenSaverIsSecure"="0"

"ScreenSaveTimeOut"="0"

"ScreenSaveActive"="0"

 

You may also want to turn off screen savers for all other users.  That can be done with simple built in GPO settings.