Hide the welcome logon screen on Windows 10 Pro

Question

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:

• How to totally remove the Windows 10 login screen? is the general question, with the only real solution being for Win 10 Enterprise
• Remove a specific logon Windows screen is not a duplicate, it's about precisions on a specific method suggested by @harrymc, which ultimately doesn't fit the needs
• this question here is about aspects very specific on Windows 10 Pro

Answer 1

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):

The images I've used are:

• Logon Screen
• user 'photo'