XP Home: Displaying local Administrator on Welcome Screen

[Paul666]

Q. How can I display the local Administrator account on the Windows XP Welcome screen?

A. XP doesn't display the Administrator account on the Welcome screen by default. However, you can add this account by performing the following steps:

Start a registry editor (e.g., regedit.exe).
Navigate to the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\SpecialAccounts\UserList subkey.
From the Edit menu, select New, DWORD Value.
Enter Administrator as the subkey name, then press Enter.
Double-click the new value, set it to 1, and click OK.
Close the registry editor.

The Administrator account will now appear on the Welcome screen. You can use these same steps to control which other accounts appear on the Welcome screen. Set the registry account value to 1 to display an account or 0 to hide an account. For example, to hide the account for user John, add a value named "john" to the registry subkey identified in step 2 and set the value to 0.

 

[wolluf]

Or of course, you can just use Tweakui for XP -

http://download.microsoft.com/download/whistler/Install/2/WXP/EN-US/TweakUiPowertoySetup.exe

- Logon feature.

 

[bcastner]

Or hit Ctrl-Alt-Del twice and logon as Administrator.

Note: None of these tips apply to the Home Edition of XP, where you need to boot to Safe Mode to logon as the Administrator.

 

[Paul666]

My tip applies to Home Edition.

Using TweakUI is like fixing your engine with rubber gloves on. Sometimes it's nice to get your hands dirty! ;-)

 

[bcastner]

This tip has been around since early Whistler betas. Over two years ago Doug Knox, who scripted it in .vb for the regedit impaired noted: "Note: This utility will only work if the Administrator account is named "Administrator". Additionally, you can only log into the Administrator account in Safe Mode, if you're running Windows® XP Home Edition."

Danial Petri notes: "this trick does not work for Windows XP Home Edition. To work around that you'll need to boot in safe mode and log on as Administrator."

 

[Paul666]

Beg to differ mate, but I've tried and tested this tip and you dont need to be in safe mode and you can use it for any account as long as the name you type into the registry matches the username.