OK this may sound like a weird thing to want to do. If you have a PC that has no password associated with it and you lock it all you do is click back in and you don't need to enter in a password. Well I have built a home theater PC and I have it joined to my Domain so it has to have a password because it's a domain user. I created a policy preference and associated it to the PC that will create the registry key's that will allow this pc to log in automatically. But what I'm wanting is to lock the machine and not need to enter in the password to unlock it. Really the reason is when not using the machine I'd like to lock it because windows 8 lock screen is a nice way to leave the PC when not in use. It just looks nice really. But I'm using a touch pad device to control it so it's a bit of a hassel to have to enter in the password when I want back into it. I havn't tested to see if my auto login registry values will also effect when the pc is locked as I did them remotely and im not home yet to test but I'm thinking that it may not. If anyone has any info on this I'd appreciate it!
Olympus
Single & Not Looking
Just off the top of my head, what if you just made the password 1 character long so that it's easy to enter, even on a touchpad? i.e. make the password 'a' or '1' or something like that? Another idea might be to whip up a quick little program (since I know you do a little bit of coding) that just fills up the entire screen but isn't actually locking the computer? i.e you could take a screenshot of the Windows 8 login screen and then in the app you make, use that as the full screen image, and make it so just a click (or tap) will close the full screen, showing the desktop as usual. Create a shortcut to click on to start it, so you can just click that instead to the "lock" shortcut, or whatever way you're using to lock it normally. You could get creative with the program from there and make it behave however you want, to make it work best with your touchpad from there if you want. Maybe even add a bunch of your own favorite images to use and randomize them whenever you want. One of the great advantages to having coding knowledge; being able to literally make the tools you need when they don't already exist.
Anyway, the end result would be that you still have the "lock screen" looking identical as before, but no password required. Maybe just a click / tap anywhere on the screen, to "unlock" it.