Updated: April 9, 2025
Here I was, blithely using a Windows 10 system. Since day one, it's behaved nicely. No worries. Now, all of a sudden, a log on attempt kind of stuttered. The desktop loaded, but it was sluggish. The taskbar never got populated with its shortcuts. Weird. I rebooted, and things were normal again.
I launched the Event Viewer, and examined the system errors. Indeed, there were some. One that really caught my eye was: Autopilot.dll WIL error was reported. As it turns out, this thing is related to Windows logons when you use a Microsoft (online) account. But I don't use any, and so, the error infuriated me. I decided to troubleshoot some, and here we are. After me.
Problem in more detail
I don't know why or how Windows Autopilot decided to suddenly misbehave. The full error is as follows:
Autopilot.dll WIL error was reported.
HRESULT: 0x80070491
File: onecoreuap\admin\moderndeployment\autopilot\dll\dllmain.cpp, line 185
Message: NULL
My assumption is that Windows decided to botch my logon. Some silly logic about what is used and when most likely went bust. Whatever the exact mechanism under the hood, there's absolutely no reason why this thing should be running on a a system with a single local account. I decided to prune it away, as a potential workaround to my desktop stutter woes.
P.S. Notice the term "modern deployment". As opposed to what? Ancient deployment?
Solution
Autopilot comes with its own service. Disable it, and there won't be any Autopilot nonsense. I launched the Services applet, and then, disabled the Microsoft Account Sign-in Assistant service. I rebooted the machine. As I expected, there were no more errors in the Event Viewer. More importantly, the desktop was actually even more responsive now. No stuttering.
Conclusion
Here we go. Another useless, unnecessary problem. Why did it suddenly occur? I have no idea. I looked at a different system, and there, the service is set to manual startup, and wasn't running. For some reason, on this particular box, Windows decided to trigger it. Amazing. Well, no more.
I don't want to be paranoid, but I am extra watchful now that the Windows 10 EOL is approaching. I don't want any mistakes or mishaps, or anything that may "accidentally" push me toward Windows 11, as that ain't happening. A good system image is another potential remedy to any shenanigans of this kind. If your system is suddenly showing signs of distress, especially around the logon, take a look at the error log, and if Autopilot shows up there, and you're not using any online account, disable it, see what gives. We're done.
Cheers.