Windows 7 Auto Login w/ Two Accounts

sorgum

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May 15, 2014
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Midwest Rust Belt
I want my Win7-Pro box to auto start (BIOS Power mgmt Time Set) and launch automated scheduled application. I had to disable UAC so it can start and run like my old XP. This works with one account and no password. I wanted full admin permissions so I created 2nd acct, super-admin with password. I want it to auto start with the base account, so I created a Win7 credential for the low level account according to help instructions for automatic logon. It still halts on start-up and waits for manual login. What did I miss? Should I leave the credential name pswd fields blank?
 
If you have more than one account but the computer is set to always bypass all logon activity, how would you ever get to the other account? You could switch users after the auto-logon, but that would mean that the other user could never access the machine without the primary user. You know that you are both users, but Windows doesn't, and the fact that the primary user requires no password is a nuance. I don't think there is a way to bypass all logon if there is more than one user.
 
Eureka! - I found this:
Auto-Login page - netplwiz utility
http://pcsupport.about.com/od/windows7/ht/auto-logon-windows-7.htm



Click on Start and then enter the following command in the search box:

netplwiz
Press the ENTER key.
This command will load the Advanced User Accounts Control Panel applet.
In the Users tab, uncheck the box next to Users must enter a user name and password to use this computer.
Click on the Apply button at the bottom of the User Accounts window.

When the Automatically Log On dialog box appears, enter the user name you wish to automatically login to Windows 7 with. Then enter your account password in the two fields where it's asked.

Click the OK button.
Click OK on the User Accounts window to complete the process.
From now on, when your PC starts up, Windows 7 will log on automatically.


I tested this and it starts and runs my basic account and auto launch programs without login. I can do a ctrl-alt-del and switch to super user without disturbing the processes in the other acct. Best of both worlds, although I still had to disable UAC for my "unknown" automated application. Maybe I can give UAC some kind of credential which will make an exception for my automatic stream capture. I'll work on that over time.
 
Surprise! Didn't think that would work, especially with a super administrator account on the machine, which somewhat defeats the concept when you have to go through a non-administrator user to get there.

If you need to disable the UAC prompt for a specific application, this is a good explanation of the different ways you can do that: http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/11841-run-administrator.html

If you find that you need to go the route of an elevated shortcut to a scheduled task, be aware of a limitation. This method doesn't work if you have to pass an argument to the application that is not pre-defined (or even in some cases, where pre-defined arguments are required). For example, say you use Outlook as your email client and every time you start Outlook you get a UAC prompt. This method will allow you to open Outlook without the prompt. However, suppose you want to do a "mailto:" on a web page and Outlook is defined as your default email program. That's typically done by opening Outlook via a command line that passes the URL and some other command line switches. This method can't handle a situation like that.
 
Thanks for links. I'll study on that lead. My need at present is just to launch the stream recording program which has a self contained scheduler, captures AM-FM audio streams.
 
If you have more than one account but the computer is set to always bypass all logon activity, how would you ever get to the other account? You could switch users after the auto-logon, but that would mean that the other user could never access the machine without the primary user. You know that you are both users, but Windows doesn't, and the fact that the primary user requires no password is a nuance. I don't think there is a way to bypass all logon if there is more than one user.


I just wanted to make a brief rejoinder on a comment made in the discussion of LieBerrys on the subject of purported "progress" in digital concepts. As to unimpeded and automated multiple logins. No office or industrial computer system can be allowed to limit the desires and peculiar techniques of a business owner, manager, engineer or any inventor or home entrepreneur. That would be analogic two an arbitrary bureaucracy crushing the strivings of the individual for no rational, ethical or moral purpose. What a concept. No industrial or business office in 1930 would have such a limitation of not being allowed to have one individual, wearing two "hats" (fiduciary mgmt titles) working on two parallel tracks of a synchronous project at one desk.


Concerning the visionary Bill Gates (though he has had little to do with skuomorphic iconography - lookup Englebart PARC - Gary Killdal and GEM) and the Cruise Control - Panoramic Camera. The analogy of the motorcar and cruise controls (or panoramic camera obscura, a centuries old attraction done with mirrors before daguerreotype or silver emulsions), as metaphor of digital file system icons, is only meaningful if you don't know the industrial and ergonomic history of motor vehicles, camera tricks, etc and simply presume to know in hopes no one else knows either. Like many ideas deemed "new" and "improved" by kollej grajuates, almost every business office concept goes back to the Pre-Mosaic origins of trade, cuneiform wax tablet or abacus accounting, pre-codex scroll archiving, pre standardization of weights and measures, sail and animal powered transport. This was all worked between about three thousand years ago - thru the renaissance (the Genoese -Venetian modern venture capitalists), but it only takes fifty years or about two generations of stupefaction thru dumbed-down dis-education to erase the accumulated wisdom of 5000 yrs of civilization as attempted in USSR, which depended on foreign welfare and it's colonial parasitism to a much more ruthless degree than any Monarchist plantation system, to survive. "We know the [insert utopian twaddle] future, it is the past that keeps changing ( re-writing or forgetting)"


I love the motorcar analogy because it is my specialty field of industrial history with side interests in related military history, geo-politics etc. The earliest hydrocarbon vehicles that made the revolutionary breakthrough for individual freedom of travel and entrepreneurial expansion, the explosive growth of the middle class, all necessarily had some form of automatic hands-off speed control. In fact almost no autos had both throttle foot controls prior to the origin and standardization by Cadillac (Durant's GM) and Britain's Austin 7 of the current stable arrangement of steering wheel opposite the curb (Right or Left Hand drive respectively), center or side shift lever, left foot clutch, center brake and right foot throttle - circa 1912. The highly acclaimed model-T was a very weird machine by today's standards, with hand throttle, pedal shift and drive shaft brake. See YouTube for hair raising Model-T driving tutorials. BTW it was Flanders (EMF-Studebaker), VP of Ford Engineering that taught Ford the adaptation of Whitney gun mfg precision assembly lines to automotive mass production.


The hand throttle persisted partly due to the uncertain conditions governing engine speed, inconsistencies and contamination in early gasoline refinement, the crudities of primitive updraft fuel metering, and partly for convenience. Almost all early vehicles had hand throttles to set at a constant travel speed. This convenient device persisted up through the early fifties on many brands of cars and trucks. Luxury vehicles like the pre ww1 RR Silver Ghost had mechanical throttle and mixture governors that kept a constant speed up and down grades. Early racing engines like those of Peugeot, Bugatti, Miller, Duesenberg, had hemi-heads, DOHC, 4v per cyl and other "advanced" designs between 1913 - 1928. Offenhauser was a Harry Miller Chief Machinist. Read any history of Indy Racing.


Most Classic Era ( 1925-1945 ) vehicles had not only throttle controls, but adjustable power brakes, ride controls, and instrumentation far in excess of what is the norm today in most lozenge (or suppository) shaped mid-priced passenger cars. We can discuss the meaning of the word CLASSIC as pertains to motor vehicles separately, as it is universally misused and not well known today. The general denigration of our forebears goes on in abject ignorance, but the inconvenient facts remain that almost all human problems and goals were worked out and well argued centuries ago. It was only applied technology that lagged behind the ideas, and the implementation reached a plateau of perfection in computers fairly early. The cult of change inspires and seems to justify the destructive meddling of bored dilettantes who style themselves futurists or visionary designers to wreck what are stable and productive systems in the name of "change". Likewise takes a masters Degree in Sociology or the chants of "We Don't Wan' No Western Civ" to erase all that has gone before and prime the modern narcissist to destroy society in order to save it.


I hope this does not exceed the limitations of forum etiquette as a normative digression from the subject at hand, but so be it. Thanks so much for your commentary, opinions, knowledge and links on the subjects discussed. This forum has been extremely helpful.
 
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