How To - Hide or Reveal WinXP Accounts
By default Windows XP presents you with a logon screen with a selectable list of users one may log in with. This is great for most people but under certain circumstances one may want to hide or reveal the selectable list of users. There is two solutions to this common problem. Make sure to be logged in using the Administrator account or have administrative permissions.
- Change Windows XP’s logon style
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You can change the logon style to Window 2000 look and feel. Users would then be required to type in their username and password to login. This does provide the best security solution for concealing user names. Here’s how to change Windows XP logon style.
- Open the “Control Panel” (left mouse click on the Windows Start Menu -> Settings -> Control Panel).
- Open “User Accounts” (left mouse click).
- Select “Change the way users log on and off” (left mouse click).
- Uncheck “Use the Welcome Screen” (left mouse click).
You can take one step further by setting a system option to prevent the last logged in user’s name from appearing in the logon dialog box. This part can only be achieved by editing the Windows Registry using regedit.
- Open regedit application (left mouse click on Windows Start menu -> run).
- Type into the dialog box without quotes, “regedit” and press the Enter key.
- Browse to the following location in regedit, HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon (double left mouse click on the tree items to expand, single left click to select).
- Create or modify the DWORD value named DontDisplayLastUserName by setting the value to 1 (one). To create the DWORD value go to the menu Edit -> New -> DWORD value. To modify left double mouse click on DontDisplayLastUserName.
- This step can only be achieved by modifying the Windows registry using regedit.
- Open regedit application (left mouse click on Windows Start menu -> run).
- Type into the dialog box without quotes, “regedit” and press the Enter key.
- Browse to the following location in regedit, HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\MicrosoftWindows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\SpecialAccounts\UserList (double left mouse click on the tree items to expand, single left click to select).
- Create a DWORD value with the name of the Windows XP account username (ie. “foobar” without the double quotes). To create a DWORD value go to the menu Edit -> New -> DWORD value. Type in desired username and press Enter.
- Set the value of the new DWORD value you just created to 0 (zero, hides) or 1 (one, visible) (left double mouse click on the new DWORD value to set value).
