How to fix Windows XP Home – Failure Events Are Logged When the Welcome Screen Is Enabled

Had a head-scratcher this weekend with a Windows XP Home machine that repeatedly showed logon errors in the Security Event log at startup.

I rather foolishly dived in headfirst, checking all Scheduled Tasks, Services and then removing all the users on the system in an attempt to try to solve the problem – but still the errors persisted.

I then stumbled across Microsoft KB Article 305822 which explains that “Windows XP attempts a limited logon for each account that is displayed on the Welcome screen to determine whether to prompt the user for a password. An attempted logon is logged for each account displayed.”

So if you’re running Windows XP Home with the Welcome Screen enabled (as opposed to the CTRL-ALT-DEL logon sequence) then this behaviour is to be expected.

The moral of the story? Even when dealing with Home PC’s, exhaustively look for solutions on-line before you start ripping the machine to pieces! I often advise people that nearly any problem they’ve experienced, someone else has experienced that problem before and found a solution which you can use – pity I don’t listen to my own advice at times!

Sensibly I’d done a full backup of this PC before I started work, so rolled it back to the early state before I caused further botches! Phew!