DefaultUserName and AutoAdminLogon Entries Disappearing

2018-12-12

Question

_{Wednesday, December 12, 2018 5:25 PM}

I am setting up Win 10 Pro 1803 computers for a lab and am trying to get them to auto login to the patron account. I am adding the DefaultUserName with the value of Patron and AutoAdminLogon with value of 0 to the registry with the intention of turning it on at a later time. The problem is that neither of those strings persist after I reboot the computer. I used to do this all the time in Windows XP and 7 labs, but this behavior baffles me. Does anyone have an idea on how to prevent this?

These values are in the Winlogon key.

Thanks for the help.

Wendell

All replies (3)

_{Thursday, December 13, 2018 7:22 AM}

Hi,

Thanks for posting.

The problem (if we can call it so) is in Windows Registry architecture.

HKLM hive doesn't exist on your computer. On each boot Windows "virtually" assembles that hive from some files which are located in \Windows\System32\Config folder. So any key created directly in HKLM will not be stored.

But if you create a key inside existing subfolders of HKLM, it will be saved.

If you still want to create a key in HKLM, I recomend you to create it in HKLM\Software, for example in: HKLM\Software\YourKeyFolder\YourKey

Other subfolders are dangerous and may require higher privileges, so playing with them can damage the system or can cause serious security problems.

For more information:

Registry changes are not persistent through a reboot

Hope above information could help.

Best Regards,

Kallen

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_{Thursday, December 13, 2018 3:03 PM}

I appreciate the response, but it seems inconsistent with my experience. This is something I have done on Windows XP and Windows 7, very successfully. Also, if I create the entry and AutoAdminLogon with a value of 1, instead of 0, then it remains persistent across reboots. Also, numerous articles state that this is one of the ways to force an auto login of a Windows 10 user.

If the hives reset, then why does that 1 value in AutoAdminLogon persist, but not the 0 value?

Also, the Winlogon key is an existing key within HKLM. The full path to it is HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon

I just add the AutoAdminLogon string and the DefaultUserName strings to it.

_{Tuesday, December 18, 2018 7:46 AM}

Hi,

We could use GPP to push registry. So that when the domain users log on, it would be applied.