Microsoft Accounts and Passwords

Hey guys,

So I'm using my Microsoft account to log in, since I like how it syncs your customizations to the start menu/color preferences/etc, but I really hate needing a password to log into my computer since I'm the only person who uses it and the only account on there.

I used "control userpasswords2" to uncheck "require a password at login", then stored my password so that when I boot up, it logs me in automatically.

However, since updating to the 8.1 preview, I noticed that if my screen is off for more than 15 minutes it makes me enter a password to unlock it. Microsoft's site says that when you use a MS account, you *have* to put in a password to unlock it, with 15 minutes being the longest time, all the way down to "always require a password"

This just irks me, what's the use of logging in automatically if I can't stay logged in?

Does anyone here know of a workaround using the registry/GPOs?

Hello drfsupercenter,

You may also wish to set these below to see if one may be the issue.

How to Enable or Disable Password Protection on Wakeup in Windows 8


(uncheck On resume, display logon screen box)
How to Enable or Disable Screen Saver Password Protection in Windows 7 and Windows 8

Hope this helps for now,
Shawn

Tried the registry key and it didn't seem to work. Seems that for your method one, none of those options were available at all. I think the 8.1 preview removed those options for Microsoft Account users.

Can you try it on one of your computers and see what happens? It's fairly annoying that you have to be "secure" if you're using a Microsoft account now.

I'll have to do some more digging on this to see, and I'll post back when I find anything.

OK, thank you

Switch to a Local Account.

Don't want to do that. There has to be some workaround that lets you use a Microsoft account like in regular 8, before the 8.1 update...

drfsupercenter,

In the Windows 8.1 Preview, when the lock screen "Slide Show" is turned on, it has this option to automatically lock your PC after X amount of minutes like in step 9 of the tutorial below. If you turn off the lock screen slide show using step 3, this should stop.

http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials/27769-lock-screen-slide-show-turn-off-windows-8-1-a.html

Hope this helps.

That is already set to off, since it's the default setting.

I definitely think this will need some sort of a registry value to fix. On that note, I might mess around with the different times (1, 2, 3 minutes etc) while using RegShot and see what changes.

Oh, that's weird. On my Windows 8.1 x86 it just has "Everyone must enter a password" or "Everyone doesn't have to enter a password".

This is on my Surface RT, and it says Password policy: Require a password after the display is off for: and you can choose "always require a password", 1 minute, 2, minutes etc all the way up to 15. Is there a way to replicate that on an actual computer so I can compare settings via RegShot?

Could you post a screenshot showing the full window with this setting to help see where it's at?

http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials/2598-screenshots-files-upload-post-eight-forums.html

Yeah sure, I've attached them to this post.

My desktop doesn't have the same settings as you for the "Password Policy". Mine is only to change to have users enter a password when waking the PC or not.

I'll install Windows 8.1 Preview on a laptop tomorrow, and see what it has.

Yeah, that's what I'm seeing on this virtual machine I made too. But thanks for all the help, I really appreciate it, and I have a feeling that others will benefit from this once we figure out how to fix that... I can't be the only person who hates typing in passwords!

Well, it must only be a setting for a tablet or Surface RT. The laptop has the same setting above as my desktop.

Alright, so I exported the entire registry before and after adjusting the lock times. There were a ton of small differences with metadata and other useless garbage, not sure what any of that did. But after a lot of file-comparing in the two .reg files, I came across this:

"DelayLockInterval"=dword:0000012c
That was when I had it set to 5 minutes.

"DelayLockInterval"=dword:00000384
That's when it's on 15 minutes.

Converting those to hex, you get 300 and 900 respectively, so it's storing the time in seconds. I'll try changing it to 0 and see if that makes it infinite or "always lock"... if it makes it "always lock" I'll just make it 999999 or something and see if that works.

Also conveniently enough, there's only one thing called DelayLockInterval in the entire registry, so it won't be hard to find.

The key is under

[HKEY_USERS\S-1-5-21-[GUID thingy]\Control Panel\Desktop]
In case anyone else is wondering who has a Surface RT.

Great job. Thank you for posting back with your findings.

I have the DelayLockInterval DWORD for my Windows 8.1 Preview desktop with a setting of 0 by default, so that would most likely be the "Never require a password" setting to disable it.

Alright, cool, I'll definitely give it a try when I get home (no tablet at work)

Well, I tried playing with different settings for this on the desktop, and it had no affect to require a password with turning the display back on. Seems that it will only work on a tablet/Surface.

Wow, well that is just dumb. Changing it to 0 sets it to "always lock the screen" and if I try some insanely high number like 999999, it still does 15 minutes. I guess I'll just have to hope that by the time 8.1 is finalized they fix this...