Using "defaults" to change autologin preference

Dear Newsgroup,
sorry if there already exits a post which deals with this (searching for "defaults" gives too many hits).
I am trying to help another user turn off the auto login feature. The problem is that the account it auto log's into is corrupted and will not load properly. So I am trying to remove the autologin from the com.apple.loginwindow.plist via the single user command line. Googling around I found the following commands:
nicl -raw /var/db/netinfo/local.nidb
delete /localconfig/autologin username
only problem is that the location /localconfig apparently doesn't exist (neither on his computer which is running 10.3.9 nor mine which is running 10.4.3).
Then I came across the info. that the autologin preference is stored in: com.apple.loginwindow.plist (thanks to a post in this forum, search for "Unable to get user accounts window at startup"). Only problem is that there are a whole bunch of extra characters in the file when I open it up with pico or vi - typical of opening up a rich text file?
Then I remembered from "Running Mac OS X Panther" that there was a way to edit these files via the command line - with the "defaults" command. Only problem is that it says the "Domain com.apple.loginwindow.plist does no exist" when I type at the prompt: defaults read com.apple.loginwindow.plist.
Any ideas?
Thanks,
AppleMonkey
v.1 PowerBook G4 15'' Mac OS X (10.4.3)
v.1 PowerBook G4 15'' Mac OS X (10.4.3)
v.1 PowerBook G4 15'' Mac OS X (10.4.3)
v.1 PowerBook G4 15'' Mac OS X (10.4.3)

Hi AppleMonkey,
   I assume that you could leave the "autoLoginUserUID" in place since Apple's script didn't delete it but naturally it would be more complete to delete it.
   Your "defaults" command failed because you included the ".plist" suffix. It's in the filename but not used in the "defaults" command. The corresponding file in Panther also had a "autoLoginUser" key so the same command should work for Panther. You also left out the path to the property list but that's optional if the property list is in one of the well-known locations. Both ~/Library/Preferences and /Library/Preferences are well-known locations for property lists so it should be possible to edit property lists in either of those directories without giving the path.
   There is no "delete" command; it's part of the "nicl" command. That edits the database file for NetInfo so the path given is really a sequence of nested nodes in the NetInfo database. The command probably worked in early versions of OS X because it took Apple a while to move configuration back to files. However, even then the configurations were largely optional as most apps had relatively elaborate default configurations.
Gary
~~~~
   <Flood> can I write a unix-like kernel in perl?

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