Vista auto-login as local user on a domain-joined computer

Question

We have an environment that requires laptops to login as a local user even through the machine is joined to the domain.

With XP, we could push out registry keys: DefaultUserName = 'ALocalUser' DefaultPassword = 'ThePassword' DefaultDomainName = '' AutoAdminLogon = 1 ForceAutoLogon = 1

Leaving the default domain name empty would cause Windows XP to default back to logging in to the local machine instead of the domain.

In Vista leaving it blank causes an error 'The user name or password is incorrect.' along with the username being displayed as '.\ALocalUser'

I have tried deleting the DefaultDomainName key I have tried setting it to a blank string I have tried setting it to '.'

Nothing seems to let it login short of explicitly putting in the name of the local machine. This is a major pain in the rear when I am trying to deploy those registry settings to 8 machines spread across 100 miles.

Does anyone know of a work-around or see something I'm doing wrong?

Answer 1

You need to set the domain as the local machines name. In other words, if it's XXXPC001, then the domain is XXXPC001.

In Vista, if you leave the Domain out/blank, it defaults to the Default Logon Domain... which will be your Active Directory domain.

Answer 2

My suggestion is instead of manually setting those values on each machine, instead it would be better to write a script that sets up the autologin. The script should be able to grab the computer name for you so you don't have to look anything up. Since these are in your domain you could probably even run this script as part of a startup script.