Autologin is Stupid

Just you know.... FYI.  In case you were wondering.  Yeah, sure, enable it for Grandma.  Don't worry about the grandkids tottling into the computer chair and accidentally surfing porn on that web site full of pretty pictures (you know, MSN Live?).  I'm sure it will be easy to explain later.

There's a particular product, written by a particular company, that does our Student Management.  I don't want to attract undue attention here, but let's call it "Flowershmool" and point out that it was originally written to run on Mac hardware.

Anyway, at some point they ported it over to good ol' Windows (/gag) but failed to... pay any attention to how server services work in Windows.

You see, the product is not designed, out of the box, to run as a service, but rather as an autorun item on login.

I'll let you absorb that for a moment.

Pretty dumb, right?

With that in mind, the only way I could think of to keep this service up is to have an account autologin, and then lock the workstation on boot.

In case you ever need to do this stupid, stupid, stupid thing, here's the KB article:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315231

And in case the article disappears, here's the gist:

1. Locate the following registry key:
   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon
2. Using your account name and password, double-click the DefaultUserName entry, type your user name, and then click OK.
3. Double-click the DefaultPassword entry, type your password under the value data box, and then click OK.
   
   If there is no DefaultPassword value, create the value. To do this, follow these steps:
   1. In Registry Editor, click Edit, click New, and then click String Value.
   2. Type DefaultPassword as the value name, and then press ENTER.
   3. Double-click the newly created key, and then type your password in the Value Data box.
   If no DefaultPassword string is specified, Windows XP automatically changes the value of the AutoAdminLogon registry key from 1 (true) to 0 (false) to turn off the AutoAdminLogon feature.
4. Double-click the AutoAdminLogon entry, type 1 in the Value Data box, and then click OK.
   
   If there is no AutoAdminLogon entry, create the entry. To do this, follow these steps:
   1. In Registry Editor, click Edit, click New, and then click String Value.
   2. Type AutoAdminLogon as the value name, and then press ENTER.
   3. Double-click the newly created key, and then type 1 in the Value Data box.

Before you every do this to any computer, please ask yourself why.  Then go have a beer.  Then  come back and ask yourself why again.  If you still think you need it, god help you.