I generally want my computers to automatically logon to my personal account when I turn them on (or when they restart in the middle of the night following an automatic Windows Vista update) so that I don’t have to waste any time logging in when I sit down to use the computer. This may not be the ideal thing for a computer shared by several users, but for a computer that has a single main user it is often very desirable.

I just got a new desktop computer and I’m in the process of setting it up with all my personal preferences.  This seems to take longer and longer as Windows gets more and more filled with bloat.  It seems to me that setting up automagic logons was a lot easier in Windows XP than it is in Vista, but I can’t actually remember how it was done there either. Maybe it was included as an option in the TweakUI Powertoy. Anyway I always have to hunt around to find the trick for Vista machines, so I thought I would write it down so that we can all find it easily the next time we need it.

Fortunately there are only a couple of easy steps:

1. Click Start and type netplwiz in the search field (or in the Run… dialog if you are using the classic menus)
2. Click Continue if one of those uber-annoying “User Account Control” windows appears
3. Select the user account to which you want to automatically logon
4. Clear the “Users must enter a username and password to use this computer” option box up above the User Accounts window
5. Click OK
6. When prompted, enter the password for the user account you selected in step 3

That’s it.  From now on whenever you start or restart the computer Windows Vista will automatically logon to your preferred account.  I assume that this method will also work for Windows 7, but I haven’t been able to test it yet.  I’ll get back to you sometime on or near October 22nd!!

UPDATE Oct 27, 2009 – This trick is definitely still applicable to Windows 7, and it works perfectly!

I’m the type of guy that uses keyboard shortcuts all the time. It’s simply faster and more efficient, and it works for me. So back in the Windows XP days I got very used to using Win+L to change users (ie. to log into a different account) when working on a computer with multiple user accounts. This is a very common situation in common areas in offices or more likely around the home. This nifty little key combination automatically took the user from the current application or the desktop directly to the welcome screen where you could select the account you wanted to use.

Along came Windows Vista and they added an intermediate step to the process. Hitting Win+L now locks current user account rather than going to the welcome screen. The user is presented with the option to enter their password to access the recently active user account, or to hit the Switch Users button to bring up the welcome screen. Aside from adding a step (which is often time-consuming as Vista has to think about who-knows-what after each selection is made), this change is also pointless and is definitely not an improvement over going directly to the welcome screen. Chalk this one up to the massive list of “what-were-they-thinking” developments that arrived with Vista.

(If you hadn’t figured it out already, in Vista the term “Fast User Switching” really only means that more than one user can be logged in at the same time; however, only one user can actually be connected at any one time. Switching between those users is not necessarily very fast. This is not intuitive and what most users really want is a way to switch between users quickly, or even instantly!)

There a couple of options to getting around the Locked screen:

1. The first option is free, and it comes courtesy of Quinn Lewis: Quinn pointed me to a hack using a utility that comes with Vista called TsDiscon.exe. Creating a shortcut to this utility and adding a custom keyboard shortcut will allow you to automatically jump to the welcome screen. Apparently this trick doesn’t work for everyone, but it worked perfectly for me. If you want to give it a try there is a tutorial on how to do it over at The Winhelponline Blog.
2. The second option is to buy an app called DUST (Direct User Switching Task). This app gives you the option to cycle through the currently logged on users, or to disconnect your session, by hitting Win+S. The beauty of this app is that it takes you directly to any other user accounts that are already logged in, bypassing both the Locked screen AND the Welcome Screen. The only negative is that it is not free. At only $15 it’s not all that expensive, but the $15 only entitles you to use it on one computer. If you have several shared computers then you will need to purchase a license for each machine.

If anyone has any new or better (eg. free) ways to make this work, I’d love to hear about. Please leave a note in the comments. Let’s all hope that this process is streamlined in Windows 7…