Auto Logon NT4 box w/ a blank admin password

MLF:

Must be a "Security Feature" in NT4 Server. You cannot edit the registry with a blank password i.e. password=""

You have to use usrmgr to set the password to blank, then logon as administrator once. After that, it will work. Unless display last username is disabled.

"Security Feature" I crack myself up :D

I cannot change the admin password beacuse I was told by the Director of IT not to. xD

Well, I got it figured out now. Here is what I did.

1) Enabled autologon in the registry.
2) Made all shares /persistent:no
3) Created a batch script to reconnect all the shares on startup w/ no persistent.
4) created an update.reg file that switches the registry to autoadminlogon = 1 (back on) and placed this in the startup folder.



This seems to work. I can turn on the autoadminlogon to work in the reg, and it will reboot fine one time. Because after the auto logon, it turns it back off in the registry (autoadminlogon=0). But it will still make it thru because I had forced it to on before the reboot.

So now once the machine logs on, and resets it to off, the batch script then turns it back on.

Hopefully this will work for now.



I still am looking for a solution to the 98 logon problem. We have a very old legacy server that still runs 98 software. I am looking to have this box auto logon also. The only problem though is that it needs to logon to a domain. I have seen no place where I can store the defaultdomain info and have it automatically do it. Most places have the script to do it only into the local machine.

Can tweakUI do this? Any help is greatly appriciated.

I've never done so in a Domain, but I've used TweakUI on XP, ME, 2000, and 98 boxes to log into samba servers automatically on startup.

Can't remember the specifics right now ( don't know if it is age or alcohol ) but usually set up the logon accounts to the box first ( locally the default account had no password ), then set up the accounts on the server ( with passwords ) then installed TweakUI and installed the necessary info to log on automatically on startup.

Again ( as I recall ) there was a problem with 95 and earlier ( and maybe some 98 ) concerning how they handle sending the passwords: something about they sent in plain text, NT4 and above sent encrypted. It was a simple reg hack if needed, but something to consider.

Be advised, this is not the most secure method! Besides the lack of local logon password to boot, as I recall the passwords are stored in and can be pulled from the registry ( plain text ).