Windows Vista Autologon

autologon.exe is designed as a simple command line app for setting up autologon on a Vista machine. It won't solve all the world's problems, although Andrew Jennings, LogonUI and CredUI Developer promised otherwise on the Shell: Revealed Blog. Daniel Oliver with Program Manager Windows Shell Team has posted the power toy warning that it is not supported in any way. "autologon.exe. users to store their credentials encrypted in system context. Anyone interested in logging on automatically using stored credentials" can try out the application. "This power toy stores a user's password for autologon in a system encrypted portion of the disk. This is an unsupported tool and is offered for the amusement of the Windows user community", Oliver added.

autologon.exe enables the set up of autologon from the command line provided that the afferent commands run from an elevated command prompt. The application also removes the password or the smartcard pin from the registry where they are in plain text and stores them as a LSASecret. In order to check the password stored in the registry check HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESoftwareMicrosoftWindowsNTCurrentVersionWinlogon and keep an eye out for a default password value.

Here are a few command lines for autologon.exe:

Autologon.exe /Set /Username: (This command sets up the computer to always autologon on boot with the username )

Autologon.exe /Set /Username: /Count:4 (This command sets up the computer to autologon with the username on the next four reboots. After that it will no longer autologon)

Autologon.exe /Delete (This command clears the autologon data)

Autologon.exe /Migrate (If auto logon is already set up on the computer this command will move your password out of the registry and store it as a LSASecret)