I built a Windows 11 Pro VM in Parallels using the Installation Assistant. Parallels automatically created a user name that matches my Mac user name and auto logs in. The problem is, I don't want it to auto login as I'm going to join it to a domain and use a domain login. How can I disable the auto login? I already changed the password on the account so now every time I start the VM, it tries to auto login an fails.
Greetings, To disable auto-login, please follow the steps below: 1. Open Parallels Desktop and Launch your Windows Virtual Machine. 2. Click on the Windows Start Icon > Type Regedit and press enter. 3. Navigate to the following Path: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon 4. Make sure you selected the Winlogon folder and on the right panel, please search for DefaultUserName and delete it (Right-click select delete) 5. Restart your Virtual Machine and it should no more auto-login to the windows profile. Best regards!
There is also an app that should do this: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/autologon
This is not serious. Is should be an option when installing a VM to ask whether you want autologon or not. Same for letting you chose the account creation. Mine was imposed from the main user Mac folder. I never was asked to create the default account during Windows install. Only solution offered by Parallels: change the name in the account in Windows, then change all the links to c:\Users\[account name] everywhere on the disk and in the registry... Yeah sure.
Hi Sjordi, The overwhelming majority prefer this experience and in these cases we don't offer an option directly. However there is an option we provide for your scenario to install Windows and name the user manually: https://kb.parallels.com/en/129607 there will be no autologin as well. I hope it helps and thank you for feedback!
I did install it through the manual configuration via an ISO image but never was asked anything regarding user account creation. It was not the ARM version though, so it may be different. But it's not important anymore as I gave up using Parallels (poor performances, shared folders not seen by some 3rd party software during their install processes, etc...) Thanks anyway for taking the time to comment my previous post.
Maybe the legacy Intel Mac issue. Performance is far better on Apple Silicon and we made improvements to shared folders to improve compatibility with some legacy shared apps.
