In 2010 I wrote, in Italian, how to turn on automatic login in Windows 7. I wanted it for convenience on a Windows virtual machine. The same trick still works on Windows 10 and 11, with one catch on 11.

First, the warning. With automatic login, anyone who turns on the computer is in your account, with your browser sessions and your files. Use it on a virtual machine, a media PC or a kiosk, not on a laptop you carry around.

With netplwiz

  1. Press Win + R, type netplwiz and press Enter. (control userpasswords2, from the 2010 post, opens the same window.)
  2. Select the account that should log in at boot.
  3. Untick “Users must enter a user name and password to use this computer”.
  4. Click OK. Windows asks for that account’s password twice. With a Microsoft account, use the account password, not your PIN.
  5. Restart and check that Windows goes straight to the desktop.

A reader asked how to choose the account when the PC has several: it’s the one selected in step 2 (and you can change the user name in the dialog of step 4).

The checkbox is missing on Windows 11

On Windows 11 the checkbox in step 3 is often not there (Windows 10 does the same when the setting below is on). Windows hides it while the device only allows Windows Hello to sign in to Microsoft accounts.

Open Settings > Accounts > Sign-in options and turn off “For improved security, only allow Windows Hello sign-in for Microsoft accounts on this device”. Close and reopen netplwiz, and the checkbox is back.

With Sysinternals Autologon

If netplwiz gives you trouble, Microsoft has a small tool for exactly this: Autologon, part of Sysinternals. Run it, check the user name and domain, type the password and click Enable. Click Disable to undo it.

It stores the password encrypted as an LSA secret. Microsoft’s page is honest about what that means: any administrator of the machine can read it back. That’s still better than the old registry tip you’ll find in many guides, which puts the password in the DefaultPassword value of the Winlogon key in plain text. Microsoft advises against it, and so do I.

Undo it

Open netplwiz again and tick the checkbox, or click Disable in Autologon. If you turned off the Windows Hello setting only for this, turn it back on.