Autologon tool for Windows.

[2Tired2Tango]

This is more of the stuff I get asked for all the time....

The attached "Autologon Tool" is a very simple program, just enter the account name and password and click enable. The next time you start your system it will log into the account automatically. If you want to disable autologons just click disable and it's gone.

You will need Admin priveledges to use this program.

Tested on XP and 2000 ... let me know if it works on Vista and 7.

 

[Rob Williams]

Ahh, haha. This is one particular thing that has bothered me about Windows forever. Something like this should be simple, but it's not. Even in the latest versions of Windows, there's no auto-logon feature that's easy to access, and going to a search engine and figuring out which program to type in the run bar is certainly not simple.

For those who might want the manual route, I'll just include some URLs for that purpose:

Auto-Login Windows XP
Windows Vista/7

 

[Doomsday]

awesome guys!

 

[2Tired2Tango]

For those who might want the manual route, I'll just include some URLs for that purpose:

Auto-Login Windows XP
Windows Vista/7

Nice URLs Rob... only one difference... My little homebrew tool works with systems where there are multiple, passworded accounts.

 

[Rob Williams]

I didn't clue into that fact that it was your tool. I'll give it a test next time I'm in Windows 7.

 

[2Tired2Tango]

I didn't clue into that fact that it was your tool. I'll give it a test next time I'm in Windows 7.

Ah... thanks. I'd appreciate that.

Little knock togethers like this aren't done for credit, Rob. They're done for results.

 

[Rob Williams]

I tested the tool in XP, and it worked just as expected, but the same can't be said in 7 (which I believe is identical to Vista).

Fantastic little tool though.

 

[madmat]

I didn't set a password on Vista or 7 and it logs into my user account when I power up.

 

[2Tired2Tango]

I tested the tool in XP, and it worked just as expected, but the same can't be said in 7 (which I believe is identical to Vista).

Fantastic little tool though.

I thought that might be a problem....

Did you get any error messages... and what were they?

 

[Rob Williams]

I didn't set a password on Vista or 7 and it logs into my user account when I power up.

That's because you only have a single account on there, and it's administrator. If you were to add a second account, you'd no longer see that happen.

I thought that might be a problem....

Did you get any error messages... and what were they?

No error message at all. It just closed after I pushed "Enable", like it did in the XP version. I'm sure the tool worked, it's just that Windows Vista/7 doesn't access the same registry key (or whatever it is your tool edits) as XP did, so it doesn't work.

 

[2Tired2Tango]

No error message at all. It just closed after I pushed "Enable", like it did in the XP version. I'm sure the tool worked, it's just that Windows Vista/7 doesn't access the same registry key (or whatever it is your tool edits) as XP did, so it doesn't work.

Ok... thanks. So we qualify that as an XP tool and I'll have to write a Win7 tool... which shouldn't be too hard. It's not like it's some huge application... the EXE is only 11k.

 

[Rob Williams]

Ok... thanks. So we qualify that as an XP tool and I'll have to write a Win7 tool... which shouldn't be too hard. It's not like it's some huge application... the EXE is only 11k.

Haha, yes, thanks for not writing that in .NET. I should have made a joke earlier about your program hogging our server's bandwidth, but I was a little slow on the draw

Just installed a fresh copy of XP in my VM and used this to rid the annoying problem, thanks again.

 

[2Tired2Tango]

Haha, yes, thanks for not writing that in .NET. I should have made a joke earlier about your program hogging our server's bandwidth, but I was a little slow on the draw

Some years ago I took a bit of a side trip into Delphi. Since at the time I was setting up a few MIDI systems for people I immediatly sought out programming examples that were relevent.

This one example I found makes your point perfectly... It was a little MCI demo, written in Delphi, where you could pick a single MIDI file from the standard "open file" dialog and play it. There were only two buttons "Open" and "Quit"... Now this thing was nearly 4mB...

Hmmmm says I, reverting to C, "how small can I make this"... I did the exact same thing as the Delphi example in less than 20k...

Since then anyone who tries to tell me that Object Oriented Programming is better than "old school" Procedural Programming gets laughed at.

Heck Rob, the Server for my Remote Media system is under 100k.

Just installed a fresh copy of XP in my VM and used this to rid the annoying problem, thanks again.

Not a problem... I'm not adverse to sharing the stuff I'll never make money from

 

[Psi*]

Some years ago I took a bit of a side trip into Delphi. Since at the time I was setting up a few MIDI systems for people I immediatly sought out programming examples that were relevent.

This one example I found makes your point perfectly... It was a little MCI demo, written in Delphi, where you could pick a single MIDI file from the standard "open file" dialog and play it. There were only two buttons "Open" and "Quit"... Now this thing was nearly 4mB...

Hmmmm says I, reverting to C, "how small can I make this"... I did the exact same thing as the Delphi example in less than 20k...

Since then anyone who tries to tell me that Object Oriented Programming is better than "old school" Procedural Programming gets laughed at.

I have wondered where you were coming from WRT OOP. I am a C++ guy tho recent activity wouldn't support that ... recent code has been VBA as that does seem to be the in vogue scripting language for the software I use. Back to the C++, there are tricks to prevent assemblers from adding in default libraries and for the compilers I use it is those libraries that hog things up. There are many tricks to use to prevent this. One of the primary tricks is to *not* use anything from Microsoft as the simplest one.

Some of the code I have written had dozens of parentheses which I absolutely do not have patience to sort out. C++ & its "overloaded operators" (no, not Rob) are a means to write software that is fairly easy to read & can be compiled into some pretty small packages. I like Borland actually ... kind of a blast from the past ... reading about GNU again.

 

[Rob Williams]

Whew, Borland... does that name ever bring back memories from my C days. I could never understand the real purpose behind it though, so I always just went with either Bloodshed or VC++ for all my coding needs (both had their perks).

This one example I found makes your point perfectly... It was a little MCI demo, written in Delphi, where you could pick a single MIDI file from the standard "open file" dialog and play it. There were only two buttons "Open" and "Quit"... Now this thing was nearly 4mB...

Yes... it's insane, and it seems to be getting even worse with all these incredibly bloated development SDKs and UIs. I am almost curious to download the latest version of VC++ and see how much space a simple hello world would take up.

Heck Rob, the Server for my Remote Media system is under 100k.

I assume that's because it's taking advantage of what's available in Windows, and you aren't writing your own network layer, right? Either way, that's incredible. I'm hard-pressed to ever stumble on a useful program nowadays that comes anywhere near 1MB, much less 100K.

"overloaded operators" (no, not Rob)

Har har! You have no idea how right you are, actually

 

[2Tired2Tango]

Yes... it's insane, and it seems to be getting even worse with all these incredibly bloated development SDKs and UIs. I am almost curious to download the latest version of VC++ and see how much space a simple hello world would take up.

LOL... you should see what you can do in assembler... There the smallest program is about 16 bytes... yes just four measly dwords. JMP FFFFFFFF ... the old DOS Reboot vector.

I assume that's because it's taking advantage of what's available in Windows, and you aren't writing your own network layer, right? Either way, that's incredible. I'm hard-pressed to ever stumble on a useful program nowadays that comes anywhere near 1MB, much less 100K.

I've always liked talking directly to the OS. I use WinApi code for the most part, native controls, subclassing only when I have no choice and try to keep most of my calls into Windows DLLs rather than third party libraries... You'd be surprised what you can do in 100k.

Edit: Added a screenshot from explorer, for those who might think I'm pulling their legs....

 

[2Tired2Tango]

I have wondered where you were coming from WRT OOP. I am a C++ guy tho recent activity wouldn't support that ... :

C++ is probably better than most. .NET and C# is a fricking bloatware disaster, Delphi isn't much better and don't even get me started on Visual Basic...

The thing I like about C++ is that you can simply ignore OOP and do it old school if you want to.

Right now my favorite programming tool is old school C... Pelles C I've gotta give Pelle credit... even an old fart like me can crank out some pretty good code with little or no trouble.

 

[2Tired2Tango]

New Version... autologon tool.

Ok guys new version.... tested and working on Vista and 7.

Will automatically log you in on a passworded account.

Of course you need administrative permissions to run it.

 

[Rob Williams]

I'll give that a test in the days to come. Don't need it on my main PC since I auto-logon, but I believe my mother's PC could use it, so I'll test it there.

 

[Psi*]

2Tired! Not wanting to sound "thick" here, but how would I need this?

To qualify that, I currently have my own network that no one else touches, so meh. BUT I will be working in a "real" office soon and I suspect that this will be useful. But I cannot make the connection at the moment. Just call me "Clueless in Minneapolis" or at least in a couple or few months.