I always zoom past the login screen on my Windows 8.1 computer, but I’m curious, what things can I tweak and access without logging in?
That’s a great question because it turns out that by default the Windows 8.1 login screen gives you access to a surprising amount of the basic system state of the computer itself, including requesting a restart when there are updates to apply, enabling assistive technology, bringing up an on-screen keyboard, and more.
Most people do what you do though, they just zip past the login screen or even just leave their computer logged in 24×7 so there’s never a chance to see this screen, let alone find out what it offers.
So let’s have a tour!
To start out, here’s a login screen in Windows 8.1 for a computer — on a tablet there’d be a keyboard displayed by default:
Not much there, just a big grey screen.
Look closer, however, and you’ll see a sort of 1/4th missing pie icon on the lower left, a tiny computer screen with a cable next to it, then on the right a power icon.
Start by clicking on the pie icon (Note: I’m sure it has a better name but that’s what I see when I look at it. Maybe I’m just hungry!)
You can see that there are a lot of different assistive technologies you can turn on from this point, even before you log in to the system. Handy. What do they do? Turns out that Microsoft has a very useful tech note on all of this: Windows Accessibility Features.
I will say that I’ve never had to enable any of them so other than “On-Screen Keyboard” I’m not entirely sure what they all do. Again, check out the Microsoft tech note I reference above to learn more.
Adjacent to that is the connectivity icon, the PC screen with the Internet cable, even though you probably didn’t realize that’s what it was.
Click on it and information appears far, far across the screen on the top right:
Here it affirms that my system is connected to the network. Handy. And interesting that it doesn’t identify that it’s via Wi-Fi and the name of the wireless network.
Now click on the power icon on the lower right corner…
Surprise, there are updates queued to apply and I can actually update and restart right from the login screen without actually logging in. If there weren’t updates it’d just say “Restart”.
One more thing. See in the middle, immediately below the PIN input field? Click on “Sign-in options” and you’ll find that whatever you’ve set up, you can always log in with your live.com account credentials:
You can see that I can still enter my PIN — fast, easy — or by clicking on the key button can log in with my Microsoft Live credentials.
Handy.
Oh, and one more. Click on the arrow icon to the left of the account photo and you’ll get to the account selection window:
That’s how you can pick a different user account, like Susie’s, if the one being shown isn’t the one you desire. Easy enough.
Thank you for your tips.. 🙂
I will try it right now