Booting straight to Desktop in XP

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Thumper
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Booting straight to Desktop in XP

Post by Thumper » Fri Jun 19, 2009 12:12 pm

For those of you that have a WinXP machine that you use for a server, it can be pretty annoying when booting WinXP to have to click on a user account to get to the desktop. I use UltraVNC to remotely control my server which is in a different room than the one that I fly in and I want to be able to just hit the power button and walk away knowing that it will be ready for me to log in via UVNC from my pit so I can start my LockOn server.

Unfortunately, my machine, even though it only has one user acocunt, boots to a login screen which requires me to sit around and wait for it to boot up, turn on a monitor, click on my user account, etc. before I can go upstairs to my mancave. If you've had a similar problem this will be of interest to you.

I have found two solutions. One requires downloading a program called "Powertoys", installing it and configuring it to make your machine do your bidding, which is in this case, booting directly to your desktop.

The other solution is far simpler and less time consuming and requires no software to be downloaded or installed. The instructions are below and I wll post a link to the website where I found this handy information as well.
the-pc-guru.com wrote:Click Start, Run, and enter 'control userpasswords2' .
Clear the check box captioned "Users must enter a user name and password to use this computer".
Click OK.
Enter the user name and password for the account you want to log in to at start-up.
Boot straight to your desktop in Windows XP

It's a really simple fix that will make your life as a LockOn Server admin much easier because you can power on your server and walk away or "fire and forget"!

@LD would you mind adding a link to this post to the "Mother of All Stickies"?
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Lawndart
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Post by Lawndart » Fri Jun 19, 2009 12:33 pm

I've always booted straight to desktop, so at first I was a little confused as to why this would even be an issue. Then again, I've used Tweak UI (Powertoys) for well over a decade and I probably just don't think anything of it anymore, being used to making XP do what I want it to do and always boot to desktop (single user). I'm still pretty sure you don't need Powertoys to turn off the login screen though. I think there's even a setting in the Control Panel for it somewhere...

Another good program to download that lets you select which programs run on startup and actually turn them off, or even delete them (permanently) from your startup queue (something "msconfig" won't let you do) is called: Startup Control Panel

I got rid of every single automatic update notification manager or update crawler using this and brought my processes down by about a dozen for startup. A good tip is to Google each active process in the startup queue to see whether your computer needs it or not. The Google search results usually tell you right away if the process is needed or can be deleted.

@Thump, I know there's an abundance of sites with extensive XP tweaking information out there, but I'll take a look at putting together an entirely new section for "Computer Tweaking" in the MOAS thread and add topics that make sense for gaming and making ones rig run more efficiently.
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Thumper
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Joined: Thu Nov 03, 2005 10:00 am
Location: Weslaco, TX

Post by Thumper » Fri Jun 19, 2009 2:13 pm

Oddly, I've just reinstalled WinXP on all of my desktop machines and one of them boots to the desktop and the others boot to a login screen. As far as I know there is no setting in the control panel, I checked before I Googled for a solution. None of the info returned by my search suggested simply changing a setting in control panel either.
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