ok, here's the answer you're looking for.....
there are 4 registry "strings" you've got to create/modify if you want to force windows 2000 server to log in automatically (i.e. save login/pass and go right to the desktop when you power up)
located at the following address in regedit
-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
-SOFTWARE
-Microsoft
-Windows NT
-CurrentVersion
-Winlogon
you need to find the following strings and ensure that they are as follows:
String Name: AutoAdminLogon
Type: (REG_SZ)
Value: 1
(this sets the autologin to take effect, note, I had to create this on my machine, it's not typically in the win2K server registry)
String Name: DefaultUserName
Type: (REG_SZ)
Value: <whatever your default username is to be set as>
(this already existed for me, in my case it was the only account that wasn't "Administrator" but it may be different for you)
String Name: DefaultPassword
Type: (REG_SZ)
Value: <password for default account>
(if your password is blank you do NOT need this line, it will automatically delete itself if you create it with no password)
String Name: ForceAutoLogon
Type: (REG_SZ)
Value: 1
(what this does is keep the auto-logon enabled rather than letting it disable itself after every time it logs in automatically forcing you to go back into the registry and change the autoadminlogon value to 1 again)
NOW, if by chance this machine is also a member of an NT domain, you'll need to add the following line
String Name: DefaultDomainName
Type: (REG_SZ)
Value: <name of default domain which computer needs to log into>
that should fix your problem, it's done exactly what I needed it to do and that's set the machine up so that it automatically logs in under a specific user so that I can remotely restart the machine if need be and it'll automatically go back in with all of the "auto-start" software running as soon as I try to get back into it, now bear in mind, if that's something you're needing to do, you'll want to time the "reboot/login/accessible" process so that you know how long it'll take before you need to worry about whether something messed up or not.....
