Shutdown without logon button - the saga continues.

It's the only issue I have at the moment with W11 !
It's minor I know, just irritating. Must-not-let-Microsoft-beat-me.
At the login screen I'm missing the Shutdown button.
It IS there if I logout though. Every time.
I checked the registry in safe mode and the setting is still there.
I disabled 3rd party apps and it's still missing on boot, so a Windows app is changing it on startup.
Question is, which one.
I could start disabling groups of apps/services at a time to narrow it down but that's just going to cause grief and errors or worse.
The registry value gets changed from a DWord to a string, which is interesting.
If the DWord is 1 then it's enabled, 0 = disabled, so a string is undefined?
How do I find which app is responsible. Registry monitoring via Sysinternals Procmon etc didn't offer anything.
Given that the value is "ShutdownWithoutLogon", I could scan every file in a system image (using an image to ensure files aren't locked and inaccessible) to find that string and the culprit and at worst edit the file and modify /delete the string.
I'm grudgingly considering a 23H2 factory recovery install and reinstall everything again, but that's a serious pain.
Maybe an inplace upgrade, but I don't have high hopes there.
Any ideas?

I don't get it, it works as written

regedit

Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System

shutdownwithoutlogon REG_DWORD 1

Computer users are members of the BUILTIN\Users group and have the privilege to shut down the computer. Unless you have changed something.

Interesting. In forty-four years of owning many dozens of computers, this is something I've never thought about before, or apparently even wanted to do. So, I'll watch the thread and see what you guys come up with.

Morph000 said:

At the login screen

Click to expand...

At what kind of login screen specifically? "Logged-in but locked" login screen? Or "not logged-in yet" login screen? If it is the latter, is there a difference between "just booted" login screen and "just logged-out" login screen?

Morph000 said:

I'm missing the Shutdown button.

Click to expand...

There's no "shutdown button" in Windows 11. There's a "Power" button which opens a pop-up menu that contains a "Shut down" entry (among other things). So, what exactly are you missing: the entire "Power" button or just the "Shut down" entry from the menu?

Check the settings in local security policy

As stated, the setting is ENABLED and there if I reboot into safe mode or anything else and check it.
Something is changing it during boot up.
As I said too, if I LOGOUT (not just a screensaver lock screen or such) and have to enter my password to LOGIN again, the Shutdown button is there EVERY time.
Ironically when I made this post and rebooted, lo and behold, the Shutdown button was there. Once. Gone next reboot.
I can't see how a timing issue could cause this but it *may* be a possibility as I've seen such anomalies before.
What I need to know is what applications/driver/service would want to control this feature. Presumably something security related.
Something keeps changing the registry value to a string value. Undefined.
It's almost though it's being over-ridden by a server policy or such, but this is a standalone pc, never been on a network or domain.
Maybe manually writing the setting to Group Policy for machine in Sys32?

You can try auditing registry changes, which will create Event 4657 S logs for a specific reg key.
That might report the offending process' name.

Follow this guide:
Find what is changing the registry value - Microsoft Q&A

I found the solution at last! It was due to a service called LG Security Guard which provides extra security for Windows Hello, which I don't use.
2 weeks and 50 restarts/shutdowns later and it's perfect!
I gave up on it for a while as it looked to be a Microsludge process rather than 3rd party, which would be a headache to track down.
Why it didn't show up when I disabled all 3rd party stuff to start with I don't know, maybe a child process, self-protection or similar, but it was intermittent.
The weirdness of W11.
So, deleting group policy settings, rollbacks, SFC/DISM etc would have done nothing, which I suspected.
No software parts cannon.