How to Disable Windows 8’s Lock Screen

How to Disable Windows 8’s Lock Screen



Tired of being forced to click through Windows 8’s lock screen before you
get to the Start screen? Here’s how to bypass it.




Boot your PC or wake it from sleep, and you go straight to Windows 8’s lock screen,
which looks more like the screen you’d expect to see on your smartphone than on a
PC. It tells you the time and date, and a variety of timely information—meetings taken
from your calendar, updates from social networking sites, an indication of your power
level, email notifications, and other similar information.

That’s all very nice, but if you’re on a PC, you probably want to get straight to work.
And that means getting to the Start screen faster. If you like, you can bypass the Lock
Screen.

Note: If you’re using a Windows 8 tablet, you may find the Lock screen more useful,
since you may want to glance at your calendar or social networking sites while
you’re on the go.

To do it, you use the Local Policy Editor. Launch it by pressing Windows key+R to open
the Run bar, type gpedit.msc, and press Enter or click OK. The Local Policy Editor
launches (Figure 1).


Figure 1
The Local Policy Editor



Go to Computer Configuration→Administrative Templates→Control Panel→Personalization.

Double-click the “Do not display the lock screen” entry, select Enabled, then
press Enter or click OK (Figure 2). Exit the Local Policy Editor, then reboot.
The new setting should take effect immediately. The next turn you reboot or wake
your PC, you won’t see the Lock screen. Instead, you’ll go straight into logging into
Windows 8.


Hacking the Hack

The Local Policy Editor comes only with Windows 8 Pro and Windows 8 Enterprise.
But you can still turn off the Lock screen in any version of Windows 8 by using a Registry
hack. In the Registry Editor, go to

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Personalization

and create a DWORD called NoLockScreen. Change its value from 0 to 1, exit the Registry
Editor, and exit and restart Windows 8. (Note: If you don’t find the Personalization
key, you’ll have to create it before creating the NoLockScreen DWORD.)


Figure 2
Turning off the Lock screen






See Also

• “Hack Your Way Through the Lock Screen of Windows 8”