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DADDY BOB'S COMPUTER Q & A
July 12, 2009
Q.
My friend has more than one user on his
computer, but when he starts up Windows, it
always goes to the last one that was signed
on without displaying the welcome screen
with all the user listed. How can I get mine
to do that too?
A.
There is a little known, undocumented, hard
to access dialog that controls this as well
as many other aspects of User Account
Administration. This dialog can be accessed
by clicking on Start, then Run and entering
"control userpasswords2" without the quotes.
This works on XP, Vista and Windows 7.
I have
made this much easier to do and remember by
writing a little program that will add an
icon to the Control Panel called "User
Account Admin (Alt). It is called "User
Accounts Admin (Alt).exe" and can be
downloaded from this sites Download section,
or by clicking
HERE.
Whether accessed from the Run line or my
program, this dialog will open.
To allow
the computer to start up using the last
person's account that was signed on, just
uncheck the box in front of "Users must
enter a username and password to use this
computer" . When this is unchecked, the
Welcome screen will not display.
For those
of you unfamiliar, you can also use this
utility to manage saved network passwords or
require Ctrl+Alt+Delete. to be pressed
before Windows will start up. To do this,
click the Advanced tab and this dialog
displays:
The
checkbox for requiring the the
Ctrl+Alt_Delete keypress to sign-on is at
the bottom. There are many other User
Accounts settings that are available in
these dialogs. Now that you know it exists,
and have easy access to it, you are free to
experiment. |
