Autologon credentials not sticking

[jrbenj]

Hello BatchPatch community!

I am new here and recently purchased BatchPatch and I must say, I love it so far! I hope someone can help me out here with the following question:

When I add a host, right click, highlight Reboot, configure autologon, insert credentials… it lets me insert the credentials, but those credentials are only good for the next reboot.. if i attempt to reboot it again, it will not automatically logon…

Thanks ahead of time for your time, your input would be appreciated

Thanks,

JB

[doug]

Hey JB – I’m glad to hear you’re loving the tool so far!

When you insert auto-logon credentials, BatchPatch creates the following registry values in HKLMSOFTWAREMicrosoftWindows NTCurrentVersionWinlogon

AutoAdminLogon REG_SZ

DefaultUserName REG_SZ

DefaultPassword REG_SZ

DefaultDomainName REG_SZ

AutoLogonCount DWORD

Currently, BP automatically sets the AutoLogonCount value to 1 in order to provide a sort-of security fail-safe. When the AutoLogonCount value is set, each time Windows is rebooted and auto-logged on, the count is decremented by 1. When it reaches 0 and the computer is rebooted, it will not auto-logon again, and the DefaultPassword value is removed by Windows.

If you were to remove the AutoLogonCount value altogether, Windows would keep rebooting and auto-logging-on indefinitely. The reason we set it to 1 is so that if the administrator intends to remove the password after reboot but forgets, the value will not persist forever in the target computer’s registry and will instead be auto-removed by Windows after the computer is rebooted a second time.

We will consider exposing the AutoLogonCount value as an optional/configurable item in a future version of BatchPatch, but in the current version it will always be automatically set to 1.

I hope this helps.

-Doug

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