28
Jan
2010

How to Hide User Accounts from the Welcome Screen in Windows 7 and Vista

Microsoft World11 Comments »




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windows 7As you know, on bootup, Windows 7 and Vista give you a Welcome screen with a list of user accounts created on the computer. Such a list is available only in the case such accounts have been password-protected. If you don’t like the idea that other users may see your account and you wish to hide it and protect your privacy, here is a simple hack to disply only the fields to inster the username and password, in perfect Windows XP style.

  1. Click Start.
  2. In the Search field, type regedit and press Enter.
  3. Locate the following registry key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software \Microsoft\Windows\ CurrentVersion\Policies \System.
  4. In the right pane, double click the DontDisplayLastName and set its value to 1.
  5. Click OK to confirm.
  6. Restart the computer for the change to take effect.

If the above hack doesn’t work, try this:

  1. Go to your Windows registry and locate this key: HKEY_Local_Machine \SOFTWARE\Microsoft\ Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ SpecialAccounts\UserList
  2. Now, right-click  the UserList folder located on the left pane and from the menu, select New  – DWORD (32-bit) Value
  3. Name the  new DWORD as  the username you want to hide and click OK.
  4. Restart the computer for the changes to take effect.
  5. Upon restaring your computer, you should see that the account you wanted to hide won’t disappear on the welcome screen!

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11 Comments to “How to Hide User Accounts from the Welcome Screen in Windows 7 and Vista”

  1. mmg1818 Says:
    January 28th, 2010

    this option is very good when install WMware.

  2. awesome Says:
    June 21st, 2010

    This is an awesome guide, thank you. Used this on all my workstations.

    It seems to only work for local logins though, and the only terminal services / remote desktop thing I have seen is “Allow connections only from computers running Remote Desktop with Network Level Authentication”. I don’t like that so much, got another way like yours for rdp?

    RDP settings I think are in:
    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\TerminalServer\WinStations\RDP-Tcp\

    I tried changing UserAuthentication from 0 to 1 and it just locked me out. That’s the closest I got :(

  3. RzdAkira Says:
    August 3rd, 2010

    How to preview it back anyway…
    If that the case i wont be able to log back in.
    so how can I do that with only a guest account

  4. AmdRazi Says:
    October 13th, 2010

    Hi,
    I got the same problem with RzdAkira.
    After I changed my administrator account hide, I left my guest account and another one is standard user account.
    How can I get back to log in as adminstrator?
    Thanks.

  5. Rob - Paid Surveys Says:
    November 9th, 2010

    Great guide. Worked perfect, thank you!

  6. akkayjan Says:
    December 7th, 2010

    1.Go to your Windows registry and locate this key: HKEY_Local_Machine \SOFTWARE\Microsoft\ Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ SpecialAccounts\UserList
    2.Now, right-click the UserList folder located on the left pane and from the menu, select New – DWORD (32-bit) Value
    3.Name the new DWORD as the username you want to hide and click OK.
    4.Restart the computer for the changes to take effect.
    5.Upon restaring your computer, you should see that the account you wanted to hide won’t disappear on the welcome screen!
    after these step in registry i am not loging in hide user.which shortcut key for show logon window at startup screen?

  7. akkayjan Says:
    December 7th, 2010

    i use regedit and hide the administrator user now after restart the computer i am not loging in hide user which is administrator user.which shortcut key for show logon window at startup screen? i am using windows 7

  8. jjsmith Says:
    December 14th, 2010

    When you do this you get an empty frame at the login screen. How do you get rid of the empty frame or how do you add a genetic picture in it.

    tia

  9. Phred Says:
    December 26th, 2010

    This is all well and good, and thanks for providing the info, but there is one slight problem: how do I log into a hidden account without unhiding it? I remember a very similar trick in XP to hide an account, and when I wanted to log into the hidden account, I would press Ctrl-Alt-Del twice from the Welcome screen (with no users already logged in) and the old-style login dialog appeared prompting me for user name and password. This trick does not work in Vista, at least not in the same way. Is there a trick to opening the old style login dialog from the Welcome screen in Vista?

  10. Robert Says:
    January 27th, 2011

    Only use the registry hack SpecialAccounts\UserList if you will still have an admin account available!

    The first one works okay but you lose the picture on the welcome screen

  11. Benutzer in W2k8 R2 - Hilfe - MCSEboard.de MCSE Forum Says:
    September 20th, 2011

    [...] [...]

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