Hide User Accounts from the Windows Login Screen

Scenario : You have enabled the Default Administrator account on your Windows PC and want it to be a fail – safe when something goes wrong but it keeps showing up on your Logon Screen. You want it to be active but it should not appear on the Welcome Screen.

Solution : The user accounts that are created in Windows will by default show up in the logon screen. This behavior provides a convenience for the users to login by clicking on their user account and typing their password to login to Windows. However, there are times when you want to hide the user accounts from showing up in the login screen as an additional security especially when you are sharing a computer.

Also, The default admin account on the Windows PC is disabled by default and hence does not show up on the Logon Screen but once you enable it, it does appear there.Fortunately, there is a way to hide it but it involves messing with the Registry. Or what you could do is use the Utility i created and cut out the the manual work….thats what technology is for, right ??
Anyways, i will list what you need to do with both.

Method 1 (Registry Edit):
This method involves editing the registry, adding the username that you want to hide and giving it a value data of 0. here are the steps :
1. Launch Regedit, while this registry editor does not appear on any menu, just type the word ‘regedit’ in the Start. Right-click on regedit and ‘Run as administrator’.
2. Navigate to the Winlogon section of the registry, at this path: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\
3. Create a Key called SpecialAccounts.Then create a sub-key called UserList.
4. Now create a DWORD (32-bit) Value with the same name as the user that you wish to hide, for e.g. Obin. You will now have a key as : Winlogon\SpecialAccounts\UserList\Obin with a RegDword Value (0). Zero means hide, one would mean show.
5. So to hide the user, let the value remain as 0 and when you want to show it back, change the Value to 1.

Method 2 (Hide User Application):
The easiest way to do it is by using a portable and free tool that I have created. You will need to run it as administrator (Right Click > Run as Administrator) to get it to make the neccesary changes.
1. Run the tool as Administrator.
2. It will show you a screen as shown below. Click on the drop down which will list all the Usrs(Active or Inactive) present on your PC.
3. Simply select the user that you don’t want to change. The tool will let you know whether the User is visible or not and allow you to accordingly Hide/Show the user.
4. If the Hide button is visible, click on the hide Button. It will remove the user from the logon screen.
5. To unhide the account, simply run the program again and after selecting the user again, click on Show User.

[Link to Source Code and Executable]

And don’t worry if you have hidden the account, you can press ctrl-alt-delete and then type your username and password to login. Let me know if you encounter any issues. Stay Sharp!!!