Sorry to hear about the problems you had. Glad to hear you were
able to recover your system.
There's nothing in the procedure that I outlined that's unique
to any version of XP. It will work for both Home and Pro. While
there are some areas of that User Account applet that won't
work in XP Home, none of them come into play when you set up an
account to logon automatically. I've posted that procedure a
number of times and this is the first time I've heard of a
problem.
Here are a few web sites that discuss logging on automatically:
How to turn on automatic logon in Windows XP
(Notice which versions are mentioned in the lower section)
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;315231
Configure Windows XP to Automatically Login
http://windowsxp.mvps.org/Autologon.htm
Skip the Welcome Screen and Logon Automatically
http://www.mvps.org/marksxp/WindowsXP/welskip.php
Before I posted by response, I ran through the procedure so I'd
be able to pass along the correct instructions. I used a system
running XP Home Edition that has one user account I created.
That account is a Computer Administrator.
Here's what I did:
Start -> Run -> control userpasswords2
Check "Users must enter a user name and password to use this
computer".
Click on Administrator.
Uncheck "Users must enter a user name and password to use this
computer".
In the "Automatically Logon" box, I left Administrator as the
User Name.
Click OK twice.
Reboot computer.
Note: I did not attempt to boot into Safe Mode.
When the computer restarted, I was presented with a box titled
"Logon Message".
Within the box was this error message, "Unable to log you on
because of an account restriction".
Below the message was an OK button.
Behind this error message was the "Logon to Windows" dialog
with Administrator listed next to "User Name".
I hit the OK button.
The first time I tried this I was taken to the Welcome Screen
where I was able to click on the icon for my user account and
logon successfully.
Once logged on I went to Control Panel -> User Accounts and
turned off the Welcome Screen.
I restarted the computer and the only thing different this time
was that after I clicked OK the Welcome Screen didn't appear.
Instead I had to change the entry in the User Name line of the
"Logon to Windows" dialog from Administrator to my account and
enter my password.
Once I logged on to Windows, I went and ran the control
userpasswords2 procedure a second time to make my account the
one that automatically logs on. No problems here.
My response to the OP was based on the possibility that at some
point in time he may have unsuccessfully attempted to set up
his system to automatically logon his user account. Quite often
a user will follow the directions outlined in one of the
articles I listed earlier but forget to change the user account
listed in the box that pops up. They'll leave it set to
Administrator. If you do that on a computer running XP Home
Edition, you get the error message about account restrictions.
Correcting the problem doesn't cause any of the issues you had.
Nepatsfan
(e-mail address removed),
Christopher Isherwood said:
I just checked out what you suggested on one of my computers
which is running Home Edition, and it totally screwed up my
computer. I had to do a system restore to undo the changes
it made to the user accounts on my computer. Such changes
included stripping all accounts of all permissions and
changing the types to guest accounts. I couldn't even do
anything in the user accounts control panel.
From what I saw, this procedure will only work on
Professional, not Home Edition.
-Christopher Isherwood
Nepatsfan said:
[email protected],
My system has a strange hang up on it's initial log on
session...
First a window pops up "Log On to Windows"
Username: Administrator
Password: [blank]
The it has another window on it's edge:
Log on Message:
! Unable to log you on because of an account
restriction>
[OK]
Why? What can I do to make these windows come up and wait
for me to click on the [OK] to get it to continue to log on
like it is supposed to?
It sounds as if you are running XP Home Edition and set it
up to automatically log on the built-in Administrator
account. You can only use the Administrator account in Safe
Mode. You either need to change the account that logs on
atomically to an account you created or turn off automatic
logon entirely.
When you click OK, you should either see the Welcome Screen
or the Log on to Windows dialog. If you see the Welcome
Screen, simply click on the icon for your user account. If
you see the Log on to Windows dialog you will have to enter
your User Name and password.
Once you've logged onto your computer, go to Start -> Run
and enter the following in the Open box:
control userpasswords2
Click OK.
On the Users tab, put a check mark in the box next to "Users
must enter a user name and password to use this computer".
Note: If you don't want any account to be automatically
logged on when Windows starts, skip the rest of this
procedure and just Click OK. If you want to have your user
account logged on automatically move on to the next step.
In the "Users of this computer" box, click on your user
account.
Now, go back and uncheck "Users must enter a user name and
password to use this computer".
Click OK.
In the box that pops up, make sure the account you clicked
on earlier is entered next to User Name.
Enter your password twice.
Note: You can leave the password box blank if the account
does not have a password.
Click OK.
Reboot to see if you get the desired results.
Good luck
Nepatsfan
