I sometimes have those days where my brain shuts down and I have a difficult time coming up with content for the blog. Yesterday was no exception, until I turned on my computer (which is running Windows 7 Home Premium) and noticed that my computer booted to the Windows 7 Welcome Screen instead of the Windows Desktop.
The Windows 7 Welcome Screen is the screen you will typically see if you have your Windows sessions’ password protected or you have the computer set up for multi-users. What caused this change of events, I have not a clue; but, I had the computer originally configured to boot directly to the desktop (and bypass the Welcome Screen).
As I mentioned, I was brain dead and could not for the life of me find an option on the computer to disable the Welcome Screen. Not only that, a change occurred to my computer without my blessing that raised a red flag and caused me to run a malware scan (just to be on the safe side). After getting the scan off my plate, which came up clean, I went to work researching this matter (Sources: About.com PC Support, Leateds and SevenForums).
What I found is this; AND, if I am wrong, please feel free to correct me. There is no option built into Windows 7 Home Premium to openly turn the Welcome Screen “off” or to bypass this. With Windows 7 Home Premium there is a fix and you will need to do this:
- Click on the “Start” button.
- Click on “Run”
- In the “Run” box, type netplWiz.exe and hit “Enter”
-
You should now see the “User Accounts” box or applet (which, by the way, provides more advanced options to managing the accounts on your PC).
- At the top section of the “User Accounts” box, uncheck the box next to “Users must enter a user name and password to use this computer”.
- Click on “apply” and the “Automatically Log On” dialog box will appear. In my case, it automatically loaded my username and I left the password entry box and confirm password entry box blank.
- Click “OK” and “OK” again and you should be good to go…
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I’ve had this happen to me plenty of times Rick, which left me scratching my head. I followed your steps and, hopefully, it won’t happen again. Of course there are two questions that remain:
1) How did the “Users must enter a user name and password to use this computer” box get checked in the first place?
and
2) Since it was checked, why didn’t my system go to the “Welcome Screen” every time I started my system?
Mak,
Unknown to me, what tripped this (maybe a Windows update, etc…). Never happened to me since I’ve had Windows 7 installed.
Thanks,
Rick