Unset Automatic Login from DOS

[EverSeven]

Somehow my laptop won't accept my password. Windows 7 Professional SP1.

I tried the solution here: User Account Password - Change from WinRE
But when I get the command prompt from the login page, everything I type is turned into ? characters.

I am unable to access other accounts from the login page because I had used netplwiz to automatically log in. Is there a way to turn off automatic login from the System Recovery command prompt? Or is there a way at the login screen to switch users? Ctrl-Alt-Del doesn't work.

Booting in Safe Mode goes straight to the same login page.

- - - Updated - - -

For some reason even though I could not log in at the login screen, I could log in to System Repair, using my normal password, so I restored from a point about a month ago and that fixed it. If anyone can explain that I'm interested. Does it have anything to do with screen locking?

 

[Megahertz07]

Welcome to the Forum.

Please edit your profile with all your hardware specs. It will help us to help you.
System Info - See Your System Specs

You have basically two phases on a Boot.
- First phase is to load system files (Drivers, services etc). It ends at the log in screen.
- The second phase begins when you choose a user. It begins to load the user preferences (color, sounds, etc). This is done loading the NTUSER.DAT on \users"name"\NTUSER.DAT.
I already fixed a friends computer that had it's profile data (NTUSER.DAT) corrupted and it was getting stuck after login.
Good to know you could do a restore. Most of the time it isn't that easy.

 

[RolandJS]

Megahertz07 -- How is NTUSER.DAT used? I'd like to learn more from your experiences.

 

[Megahertz07]

RolandJS, I haven't read anything about. It's from observation. I may be wrong

On the register you have HKEY_USERS that has the all registered users. It is responsible to show the registered users on the log in screen, and it has the link to each \users"name".
On the register you have HKEY_CURRENT_USER. It has all the settings of the current user. It loads all data from \users"name"\NTUSER.DAT when the user does the logon.

 

[RolandJS]

Both laptops have a lot of NTUSER.DAT files, is there some way to keep only the most recent and delete the older ones safely?

 

[Megahertz07]

Both laptops have a lot of NTUSER.DAT files, is there some way to keep only the most recent and delete the older ones safely?

Every user has it's own configuration so every user has it's own NTUSER.DAT.
I have 3 users:
- For myself
- For Administrator
- For Default
Each one has one NTUSER.DAT

Better don't delete any of yours

 

[RolandJS]

When I say a lot, I mean I have maybe 5 or 6 accounts [listed in Users] within each laptop, however, there seem to be 20+ NTUSER.DAT files.