Please help, thanks for all previous and future help you guys/gals give to me. Much appreciated.
Finally! I just created an account at this site solely for the purpose of unravelling this great mystery!
After a couple hours of messing about with it and dozens of forums later (apparently there are quite a few people out there interested in doing this REGARDLESS of whether it is a good or bad idea) I was finally able to figure it out.
Step 1: Open the start menu and type in "
Regedit" at the search bar. Yes, we will be messing with Windows' Registry Editor today.
Step 2: Navigate to the following path within the registry editor:
Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Authentication\Credential Providers
Step 3: At this point, you should be looking at a list of keys with random characters that contain the different logon options that Windows offers. The key names may differ on different systems, but you should be able to tell which does what by looking at their respective string values.
i.e. WinBio Credential Provider is for a biometric device logon, Smartcard Credential Provider is for a smartcard logon, etc.
The key you want, pressuming you are trying to get rid of the windows default password logon, should say
PasswordProvider, and it should look something like this:
PLEASE NOTE: At this point you may want to back up what we are about to do, since it may be the only way to recover the option of using a password logon later on. In a notepad sheet or any other text processor copy exactly the values of the keys and their respective strings and save them to your disc. Like so:
You may aso want to create a password reset disc/usb flash drive, in case you are ever locked out from windows due to hardware/driver malfunction. This would be a physical tool that you can hide somewhere safe or lock away in a safe in case you ever need it. The option is available via the control panel, under user account settings, on the left pane:
Step 4: And here we go! Are you ready for this?
DELETE the
key containing the
PasswordProvider string. You can undo this at any time by adding a new key manually with the key information you previously saved.
And voilà ! Press the windows key + L to lock your screen, and enjoy your fingerprint-ONLY logon welcome screen.
NOTE: A couple things to consider; your windows password is never actually deleted, and remains linked to your account, you are merely deleting the option of using it at the welcome screen. If you replace the deleted keys through the aforementioned method, your old password will still be valid. Make sure your fingerprint logon option is available before you try this, or you may be locked out of windows!
