Enabling Automatic Logon

If you are the primary user of your computer and you do not have any other
users, or if everyone in your household uses the same username, you are the
perfect candidate for enabling automatic logon. Automatic logon is a great tech-
nique that will save you time that is often wasted when your computer is waiting

for you to type your password. Even if you do not have a password assigned to
your account, you are still required by the logon welcome screen to click your
name to sign in. Having to do these tasks yourself is unnecessary and a waste
of time if you are a candidate for automatic logon. 
Caution   Automatic logon can be a great feature but it can also create a 
security problem for your computer. If you use your computer for business, if you 
have data you prefer to keep safe from others, or both, I strongly recommend 
that you do not enable this feature. If you happen to step out of your office or 
if your laptop is stolen, you have left the door to your computer wide open. By 
enabling automatic logon, you are trading convenience for physical access secu-
rity. However, you are not changing your network security, so your data is still 
safe from network attackers. The risk of someone remotely connecting to your 
computer is the same as if you did not have automatic logon enabled.

Enabling automatic logon is a quick and easy registry hack. Follow these 
steps to speed up your sign-on with automatic logon:
  1.  Click the Start button, type regedit in the Search box, and then press 
Enter.
  2.  After Registry Editor has started, navigate through HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\
SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon. 
  3.  Locate the AutoAdminLogon entry. If the key does not exist, create it by 
right-clicking the Winlogon folder and then select New, String Value. 
  4.  Right-click the AutoAdminLogon entry and select Modify. Set the Value 
to 1, as shown in Figure 13-1. Then press OK to save the new value. 

  5.  Locate the DefaultUserName entry or create a string value if it does  
not exist. 
  6.  Right-click DefaultUserName and select Modify. Set the value to the user-
name that you primarily use to sign in to Windows. Press OK. 
  7.  Locate the DefaultPassword entry or create a string value if it does  
not exist. 
  8.  Right-click the DefaultPassword entry and set the Value to your 
password. 
  9.  Close Registry Editor and restart your computer. 
After you reboot your computer, Windows 7 should automatically sign on to 
your account. You will notice that your computer will now get to the desktop 
much quicker than before. If you ever want to disable automatic logon, go back 
into Registry Editor and set the AutoAdminLogon entry to 0. Its also a good 
idea to delete the DefaultPassword string value so your password is not stored 
in plain text in the registry.