No password prompt on startup?

[AyyMemento]

So i've been dealing with this issue for a while, and after googling around, I really couldn't find a more up to date answer or solution to the problem.

When hitting the power button and waiting for my typical log in screen and password prompt, I stopped getting the ability to enter my password. I figured restarting would fix the problem in the beginning because it was probably a one off thing. And restarting works. But it keeps happening and still happens to me even now.

So restarting still works, but I also wanted to see if I could remove the password entirely and just have it automatically log me in as I was the only account on the PC i'm currently running now. But what happened when I removed the password was that it would boot me in to a blank screen with just the background image that i selected for my background log in. No password prompt, no user name or image.

It's at a point where i'm just kinda annoyed having to restart every single time I first boot up my computer. I also tried to add my password back, but for some reason, in settings > accounts > sign in options, the sign in options won't even load after 5 minutes so I'm not sure if that is another issue.

I'm currently running Windows 10 Home build 14393. Somewhere I read that the issue was resolved in build 10158.

 

[Colif]

The problem is likely your user profile is corrupted. Easiest fix is to make a local account, give it admin access, copy the contents of c/users/username of the old user onto the new user.

It takes 5 minutes, they have as much access as before and the login thing won't happen again... I know as what you described is exactly what happened to me and this is how I fixed it. Leave other user there as a backup admin for if this happens again. two admin always helpful in case of emergencies.

all you need to do is set up browsers again, Onedrive and maybe steam. much faster than a fresh install.

 

[AyyMemento]

The problem is likely your user profile is corrupted. Easiest fix is to make a local account, give it admin access, copy the contents of c/users/username of the old user onto the new user.

It takes 5 minutes, they have as much access as before and the login thing won't happen again... I know as what you described is exactly what happened to me and this is how I fixed it. Leave other user there as a backup admin for if this happens again. two admin always helpful in case of emergencies.

all you need to do is set up browsers again, Onedrive and maybe steam. much faster than a fresh install.

So I just tried making a new family/other person local account and i'm having issues with what seems to be One Drive. I never actually used One Drive besides whatever they needed during Win10 Setup so I'm not entirely sure what's going on there. It's stuck at a loading screen "Just a moment" but it's taking a hilariously long time.

I'm not sure if this is also linked to myself not being able to access my sign in options menu in my settings. I'm probably going to just let it continue running to see if it will actually let me create another local account, but if not i'm not sure if i'm going to have to look into a clean install or not. It would actually be a huge pain to have to do a fresh install so i'm hoping it won't have to come to that.

 

[Colif]

i only mentioned onedrive on off chance you used it. don't worry otherwise. Just stop it

 

[AyyMemento]

i only mentioned onedrive on off chance you used it. don't worry otherwise. Just stop it

Oh i'm sorry, I don't think I made my last reply that clear. Ok so I actually didn't manage to be able to even make a new local account. I'm getting this hilarious and somewhat ironic load screen when I choose either to create a new local account. Doesn't matter if I try to add a family member or someone else to the PC. I get this screen -> http://prntscr.com/f3gff5
It's been stuck loading for quite a while now

I thought it was a One Drive problem because of how the load screen looked. But I could be completely wrong and it could be another issue. I'm just getting more concerned since I wasn't able to even access the sign in options tab under accounts tab in settings. So I can't reapply my password during sign in either.

 

[Colif]

oh sorry. I thought that happened after you set up users. that is different indeed. I haven't seen that screen there before.

user accounts a pain to fix, this is meant to be the easy way.

what version of win 10 are you on?
can you right click start button
choose run...
type winver and press enter

if it says version 1703 here, right click start again
choose powershell (admin)
type SFC /scannow and press enter
SFC checks and fixes system files, if the problem is something other than users it will show here

If you don't have 1703, go to here and click upgrade now button. This will download the upgrade assistant, run it and it will update win 10 to latest version and maybe fix this.

 

[AyyMemento]

oh sorry. I thought that happened after you set up users. that is different indeed. I haven't seen that screen there before.

user accounts a pain to fix, this is meant to be the easy way.

what version of win 10 are you on?
can you right click start button
choose run...
type winver and press enter

if it says version 1703 here, right click start again
choose powershell (admin)
type SFC /scannow and press enter
SFC checks and fixes system files, if the problem is something other than users it will show here

If you don't have 1703, go to here and click upgrade now button. This will download the upgrade assistant, run it and it will update win 10 to latest version and maybe fix this.

Sorry for the late reply. So my windows version wasn't at 1703 so I was allowing it to update. It reverted some changes I made to my monitor's digital vibrance and background, but overall everything seems fine except some sluggishness.

I did notice that my password prompt came back but somehow it created a new local user account without me ever knowing and it auto tries to log into that new account but fails due to having the wrong password. I don't know how this ever came to be and i'm not sure if there is a way to delete the new user. It has my name and everything but not the same picture etc.

 

[Colif]

had you used netplwiz before to auto login? might want to look there and remove the new user from the list of accounts that auto login. don't delete user, just stop it trying

maybe that stuck screen was doing something though unsure what.

You might want to think about a reset at some stage, backup everything you don't want to lose and run reset in settings/update & security/recovery. that should fix any oddities with users.

 

[AyyMemento]

had you used netplwiz before to auto login? might want to look there and remove the new user from the list of accounts that auto login. don't delete user, just stop it trying

maybe that stuck screen was doing something though unsure what.

You might want to think about a reset at some stage, backup everything you don't want to lose and run reset in settings/update & security/recovery. that should fix any oddities with users.

I had never used netplwiz before to auto login. The new user just sorta came out of nowhere after updating to windows version 1703. The funny thing is that what I had done was remove my password requirement for logging in a long time ago in order to try and see if it will circumvent whatever was going on with my password prompt screen not popping up.

But as soon as windows updated, it reapplied my password requirement to log in. I'm just sorta confused now because windows seems to try and auto log into this new account by default and I don't know what password it wants, unless it wants the same password as my actual user account. I'm not sure if it's possible that it cloned my local account somehow.

I was thinking of doing a whole entire clean install of windows when I get to building my second rig and just keeping this PC i'm on right now as a secondary PC for my workstation/streaming. But I am wondering if there is a way to fix this issue without having to go that route right now. If not then I guess i'll end up just taking the extra 5 seconds to switch to my other local user in the log in screen and then typing my password.

 

[Colif]

What shows in settings/accounts/Family & other people - that is where my other admin account shows

Well, reset only effects C drive so if you had all your data on other hard drive or in different partitions, all you lose is everything on C. Its slightly less painless than a full install, still have to reinstall all your programs but if all your data is on another drive or partition, its just a matter of linking it up again.
i use my ssd as windows + applications that would need to be reinstalled anyway, everything else lives on hdd so if/when win 10 dies I just reinstall on ssd and have everything safe still

 

[AyyMemento]

What shows in settings/accounts/Family & other people - that is where my other admin account shows

Well, reset only effects C drive so if you had all your data on other hard drive or in different partitions, all you lose is everything on C. Its slightly less painless than a full install, still have to reinstall all your programs but if all your data is on another drive or partition, its just a matter of linking it up again.
i use my ssd as windows + applications that would need to be reinstalled anyway, everything else lives on hdd so if/when win 10 dies I just reinstall on ssd and have everything safe still

In family & other people, it's completely empty and doesn't show that account that came from nowhere. I am not even sure if that account is an admin either...

And yeah, I gotcha on that. It's just more of a pain that I don't want to deal with right now but of course if it comes to it, i'll do it in a heartbeat.

 

[Colif]

search cortana for control panel & open it
choose user accounts
click the user accounts heading in next panel
click Manage other accounts
what shows here?

reset seems the best answer if you have a phantom login as i haven't seen it before.

 

[AyyMemento]

search cortana for control panel & open it
choose user accounts
click the user accounts heading in next panel
click Manage other accounts
what shows here?

reset seems the best answer if you have a phantom login as i haven't seen it before.

Sorry for the long response again. There isn't another account there either. I'm curious and I want to try to log into the phantom account to see what the deal is.

Edit: So I just restarted my pc to see the entire process. What happens is it defaults to a user with the same name but no actual say user picture, enters a password which I presume to be the one I actually use but then fail to sign in.

Then it asks for a username and password which makes me think that it's trying to make a new account, however it still doesn't make sense why it would actually try log in with a password upon reaching the login screen.

It doesn't seem to be a huge issue as I can just switch to my actual account and log in that way, but it's still really odd.

Edit 2: I just reverted back to the previous version of windows after reading about a lot of issues which may be the reason why that phantom account came out of nowhere. Everything seems fine and the password prompt shows up now which is great.

Only weird thing is that my account picture was lost and it's the default so I guess that's just some weird thing from the reverting process. Everything else works so thank you very much for helping me!