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A few weeks ago, I was able to prevent the "welcome logon screen" to be displayed on a Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC (see the details in How to totally remove the Windows 10 login screen?):

It worked - see the accepted answer there and also my answer.

Now I tried to do the following steps on a Windows 10 Pro 22H2:

  • Turn on the feature "Custom logon" :

  • Check that a new key is automatically created in HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows Embedded\EmbeddedLogon with 3 DWORD keys (I checked, they have successfully been created, and they were not already there before previous step)

  • Set HideAutoLoginUI to 1

  • Do gpedit.msc > Administrative templates > "Do not display the lock screen" > Enabled (I also tried on Disabled equally without success)

  • Reboot computer

Problem, the "welcome logon screen" (see screenshot above) is still there.

Can you try if you have the same problem?

How do you hide this screen on Windows 10 Pro?

NB: Linked questions but not duplicate:

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    What would you want to replace it with? There is a time where the user must login. Unless you hibernate the computer. Hybrid shutdown is closing all programs and then hibernate the computer anyway. So if you close the programs yourself and then hibernate, its basically the same thing. Only on a reboot, you'll see the welcome screen again.
    – LPChip
    Commented Dec 20, 2023 at 22:09
  • @LPChip No no, this screen can totally be removed, if you use "auto login" (no password to login). This works 100%, and I achieved to do it on Win 10 Enterprise / Embedded computer, see superuser.com/questions/1733545/…. I confirm it can be bypassed: the computer auto logs in on boot.
    – Basj
    Commented Dec 20, 2023 at 22:30
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    You can't enable Custom Logon feature on Windows 10 Pro. Here is the documentation : learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/iot/iot-enterprise/customize/… -> Requirements : Windows 10 Enterprise or Windows 10 Education.
    – hidigoudi
    Commented Jan 8 at 9:21
  • @hidigoudi The strange thing is that everything is visible and available in Win Pro (Custom Logon in "Install features" , registry keys to customize it, etc.), so it creates the impression that it could work in Win Pro with a few tweaks.
    – Basj
    Commented Jan 9 at 13:16
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    Yes, I understand. But by reading the documentation, it's clearly written, but maybe I'm wrong and it's available on Windows 10 Pro. Did you try this : quora.com/How-do-you-disable-the-Windows-10-welcome-screen ?
    – hidigoudi
    Commented Jan 9 at 13:18

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I've tried the steps in your question on a Windows 10 Pro install, and it just won't work.

Alas, this is documented and explicitly so from the Custom Logon documentation:

You can use the Custom Logon feature to suppress Windows UI elements that relate to the Welcome screen and shutdown screen. For example, you can suppress all elements of the Welcome screen UI and provide a custom logon UI.

But then again:

Requirements

Windows 10 Enterprise or Windows 10 Education.

Take into account that, different from Home or Pro, Enterprise and Education versions of Windows are delivered as SaaS, with recurring annual costs. Also, in general in software pricing, unbranding and rebranding is one of the most popular reasons an Enterprise will pay more for a product (together with, in case of an OS, professional servicing options). So, if you could create a cash machine or a billboard without paying annual licenses, anyone would just use a OEM Win Pro license.

Since volume licensing is the core business for Microsoft, they will take extra care that Enterprise features are carefully locked away from non-Enterprise customers. So, to activate Custom Logon on a Win Pro machine, you'd (most probably) have to crack the Windows licensing system.

Unfortunately, the fact that the feature can be selected and the registry key is being created does not help much: as tested, those registry settings are just being ignored for Pro (and Home) users.

Possible workaround(s)

A) What I would do is to connect a small 4" - 5" monitor to the PC, set it up as primary monitor, and hide it behind the user-facing monitor. Then make sure whatever app you want to startup opens on the user-facing monitor, using one of the methods described here.

B) The 'cleanest' look you can get is to create a solid-colored image and set it as lock screen image. Then, in a HSL model, subtract 20 points of lightness and 20 points of saturation from that image, and set that one as the user image: in such a way, you will get a solid background on your logon screen, as on the following image (the darker edges are from the photo in bad lighting conditions): enter image description here

The images I've used are:

  • Logon Screen logon screen
  • user 'photo' user 'photo'
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