Please help us remove login screen

[Guest]

We have tried dozens of web sites to solve this problem with no luck. What
we want to do is that when we power on our XP/SP2 system, it goes directly
into a specific application. This is so that our very young granddaughter
can walk over to the computer, turn it on, and not be bothered with passwords
or other claptrap. We cannot find a way to avoid the Windows user login
screen - we do not know how to turn it off. Every time we try some set of
instructions we find on the web, we end up having to go into Safe Mode to
back out of it. Is there anyone reading this that can give us a set of
clear, concise, safe instructions to get rid of the login screen? Thanks in
advance, Ron and Diane in Rochester.

 

[Guest]

To auto-logon as a predetermined user, open a Run... box from the Start
button, and type

control userpasswords2

Highlight the user of your choice in the list, then UNtick "users must enter
a password... to use this computer"

Press Apply, and you will be asked to enter that user's password. Provided
the password is right, that should be the last you see of logons.

To run a program at startup, the simplest approach is to create a shortcut
to it in the Start Menu's Programs/Startup folder.

A more advanced option, if you don't want anything else at all but this one
progam to appear on the screen (not even the desktop components!) then this
can be achieved by editing the "Shell" value in the Winlogon registry key to
point to it instead of to explorer.exe. Standard warning though, do make sure
you understand the process of registry-editing or you could render the
computer inoperable.

It's possible the Microsoft Shared Computer Toolkit (a free download) might
be useful here if you want to prevent unauthorised programs being run. The
method I outline above is simple and reasonably effective, though.