The password field does not appear on the welcome screen. I must first click on my user icon. Then the password box appears. How can I make the field appear automatically?

I don't think there's a way to change that, unless you go in depth with the registry. Other than that, I don' think there's a simple way to do it. Why do you want to see it anyway? A good computer takes good care of their computer

go into control panel and click on user accounts, and then click on change the way users log in, fiddle faddle with that for a few minutes and thats all you can do with that unless you use some kind of mod

I want the box/field to display autmatically so that I don't have to click on my user account picture, in order to make the box appear. On my last XP install the white box/field displayed by default. But with this new install it does not. It is just kinda annoying, that's all. I tried snooping around the user account settings before I posted but 'Change the way users log in' doesn't show anything related. I wonder if it is related somehow to the unread email notification. I am going to turn that off next. Thank you for responding and for your help, I am extremely impressed with this forum. I hope I can learn enough so that I can contribute.