Audit Mode shutdown, sleep, power options and lock screen

[Tripredacus]

There are still some problems in Audit Mode for Windows 10. They are:

- Power settings for Shutdown are ignored (always sleep/hibernate)

- Power settings for Power button are ignored (always sleep/hibernate)

- Power settings do not always work

- Sometimes there are 2 overlapped lock screens

- Start Menu, Bluetooth, Personalize and Display Resolution menus do not work. (this occurs after generalizing an image and then booting to Audit Mode)

To start, the main complaint at RTM was that the restart/power button options were missing from the lock screen. Since Vista, this process was the same. When you log into Audit Mode, the Administrator account becomes disabled. This means that if you were to put the computer to sleep/hibernate, the lock screen would not let you log in because your account was disabled.

In Windows 7, the power setting for "Sleep after" while plugged in was Never.

In Windows 8 and 8.1, the power setting for "sleep after" while plugged in was 15 minutes.

In Windows 10, it doesn't seem to matter because it won't go to sleep after a timeout, no matter what amount of time you have it set for.

For Windows 7-8.1, if the computer had been put into sleep, when you resume you couldn't log in. You would have to choose the Restart option. When the computer restarted, it would automatically log back in with the Administrator account and you would be at the Desktop with the Sysprep program on the screen.

There is some confusion with Windows 10 because the UI actually uses 2 different lock screens, both in Audit or normal modes. When in Audit Mode, the first lock screen is the one that has your picture, username (Administrator) and the message saying your account is disabled. The only button to press is Okay (which is the same for previous OSes) which then attempts to log in with the disabled account. The second lock screen is behind this one. The second screen has all the same stuff as the first but also has the restart/power button. Through testing, I have seen these three scenarios:

1. Only the 2nd lock screen is shown, which means you can restart.

2. The 2nd lock screen is shown for less than 1 second, then the first one appears. You cannot proceed.

3. The 1st lock screen is only shown and you cannot proceed.

Now I fully understand that the difference between scenarios 2 and 3 could well be timing, and that they are the same.

In order to proceed in a situation where 2 or 3 occur, you need to reset the system. The power button is useless as Windows will hibernate or sleep. You need to do a reset if you have a desktop. If you have a notebook you need to remove power and the battery. If you have a tablet or other system without a removable battery...

What happened to me originally was I ran into this problem in IP times and reported it. Then RTM came out and it was still there. Then the first update rollup seemed to have fixed the issue, but what actually happened was that I was testing on a different system. That's right, the OS is actually working differently on 3 different systems.

System 1: Windows 10 Home x64 with KB3074683 (Compal TWS Notebook, HDD, MBR disk)

- Power Options CPL shows Monitor and System sleep settings for battery and plugged in.

- shutdown: Hibernate, wake to lock screen, account disabled, no restart option

- close lid: sleep, resumed to desktop (this is a new behaviour, haven't seen this in previous OS)

- powercfg -h off

- close lid: sleep, resumed to desktop.

- shutdown: shut down, boot and admin autologon to desktop (expected behaviour)

System 2: Windows 10 Home x64 with KB3074683 (Clevo P750ZM Notebook, SSD, MBR disk)

- Power Options CPL only shows Monitor sleep settings for battery and plugged in.

- Shutdown: Sleep, resumed to desktop

- Close lid: Sleep, resumed to desktop

- powercfg -h off

- Shutdown: shut down, boot and admin autologon to desktop

- close lid: did not sleep, only turned off screen.

System 3: Windows 10 Home x64 with KB3074683 (Asus H97M-E, RAID 1 HDD, MBR disk)

- Power options CPL shows monitor and system sleep for plugged in.

- shutdown: Hibernate, wake to lock screen, account disabled, no restart option

powercfg -h off

- shutdown: shut down, boot and admin autologon to desktop

So the reason why I thought the issue was fixed with the update was because I had (by then) moved onto another system (system 2) where the problem wasn't happening.

In all testing, using powercfg.exe to disable hibernate "fixes" the issue. As noted, changing the power options manually in Control Panel do not seem to have any effect, hence they must be ignored. Since powercfg.exe options are not reset when Sysprep is used, it is not ideal to need to change this. Imagine you were to forget to turn it back on again before you put a system onsite or sold to a customer.

In these testing, the 1st scenario does not seem to work anylonger. It had worked after the first release of KB3074683 but not the 3rd (which is in the image now.)