Ok.. In windows XP you could press ctrl-alt-del twice in order to get a real login 
screen (instead of the welcome screen) and you could enter any username even if it 
wasn't listed on the welcome screen.  

However, one of Microsoft's many genius moves was to remove this feature in Vista. 
 So, my question is, how do you login as another user on a Vista machine when only 
one user shows in the welcome screen, etc?   

[Reply or follow-up to this message]

Hi appleoddity,

If you have more than one user account created on the computer, then you can either:

1. Select that account and logon to it at startup in the logon Welcome screen.

2. While in another user account, you can open the Start menu and click on Logoff 
or Switch User (Arrow menu by shutdown button) to logon to another user account.


If you only have one user account created on your computer, then:

1. Create another user account to be able to logon to it.

http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/93009-user-account-create.html

2. You can also enable the real built-in Administrator account to logon to it.

http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/67567-administrator-account.html


If you wanted to change the logon screen to where it asks for a username and password 
instead of just the password, then see:

http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/89812-logon-username-password.html


Hope this helps,
Shawn
There are no dumb questions, just the people that do not ask them.

[Reply or follow-up to this message]

Let me explain a little more clearly what I need.

In XP you could hide user accounts and they would not show up on the WIndows XP welcome 
screen.  You would have to press ctrl-alt-del twice in order to get to the classic 
login screen where you could then type in the hidden username and password.

I want to do this in Vista.  But it appears Vista wants to force me to use the welcome 
screen.. How do I switch on the fly if I choose to login as someone like "administrator?" 
 when the administrator account is not listed. 

There has got to be a key combination or something to display the username/password 
form.

[Reply or follow-up to this message]

Ok appleoddity,

1. Vista can only have the normal logon screen, or the username and password logon 
(classic) screen. You can use the reg. files here to make switching the logon screen 
easier. This will not show any usernames in the logon screen allowing them to be 
hidden.

http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/89812-logon-username-password.html


2. To switch users on the fly, use the "Switch User" option in the Start menu or 
in the CTRL+ALT+DEL screen. This will take you to the logon screen that you chose 
above. 

http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/89939-fast-user-switching.html


3. There is no way to avoid the logon screen when switching to a different user account. 
You can set Vista to logon directly to a user account at startup though.

http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/66966-logon-automatically.html


4. This will show you how to hide a user account completely in Vista, but it will 
prevent you from logging on to it until it is unhidden again. This is good for a 
account that you do not use often.

http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/94805-user-account-hide.html

Hope this helps,
Shawn
There are no dumb questions, just the people that do not ask them.

[Reply or follow-up to this message]

I've been looking for this solution for a while. You can hide it, but you can't get to it to use it. That was a really cool feature of XP, can't imagine why they got rid of it. They gave up too much availability in the name of security. If I get it, I'll let you know. Do the same please?


On Monday, February 4, 2008 at 12:11 pm, appleoddity wrote:
>

>Let me explain a little more clearly what I need.
>
>In XP you could hide user accounts and they would not show up on the WIndows XP welcome
>screen. You would have to press ctrl-alt-del twice in order to get to the classic
>login screen where you could then type in the hidden username and password.
>
>I want to do this in Vista. But it appears Vista wants to force me to use the welcome
>screen.. How do I switch on the fly if I choose to login as someone like "administrator?"
> when the administrator account is not listed.
>
>There has got to be a key combination or something to display the username/password
>form.
>

[Reply or follow-up to this message]

Yeah that's about the whole story of Vista summed up.

I could write a couple books on how much I hate that operating system due to stupid 
little things like this Microsoft did.  

I feel like Micrsoft created Vista in order to boost some sales, knowing it was junk, 
so they could produce a better operating system people would actually want to use 
and increase revenue again in just a couple years.  ANyone want to guess on what 
the next operating system that will come out in a couple years will be called? :) 
 Kind of like what they did with Windows Millenium edition.  Vista is a sad failure.

[Reply or follow-up to this message]

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