How to: Fix Windows 7 Logon that does not Display all Users

When I got home my brother started complaining about how he can’t resolve the logon display issue on our home PC. It took me a week to finally have time to take a look at it. Well it turns out to be a nasty problem that just won’t budge. I like it though, it challenges me and it wakes my curiosity and challenges me (this bit is tricky, because if it’s too much challenge my laziness will kick in).

Issue: When you get to the login screen what you only see is one user account (with the avatar and name) and another box that says Other User even if you have 3 other user accounts instead of all of your user accounts. You can still logon to the other accounts by clicking on Other User and manually typing the username and the password.

This is extremely annoying if your PC is shared because you can’t see if others are logged on and you might shut it off causing whatever they are working on to end and they might lose data or progress in their work or pretend work.

So feeling techie, I ventured into the registry in the aid of several (like 7 different forums) online helping hands. Here are some of those I tried (repeatedly just to make sure I did it right)

First I did this:

1.       HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System

2.       Locate dontdisplaylastusername and make sure that it is disabled (by clicking on the key and make sure that the Value Data is set to Zero.

No luck so I did the next set:

1.       Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList

2.       Very Important! Backup this portion of the registry because all sort of crazy could happen. Right click then Export and save in your desired location.

3.       You will see several subkeys (sub folders) which will be named S-x-x…. you should see several of this. Open all of them and check if each one has Flags, ProfileImagePath and State and some other subkeys. All three should be present. If there are subkeys that doesn’t have all three, delete them.

4.       Restart the PC to see and it should display all the user accounts.

Except it didn’t in mine! I tried this step again just to be sure and still to no avail. Some people blame an app named FLIPSHARE and Im pretty sure we don’t have that installed so I skipped that.  I tried another one.

1.       I accessed the Local Group Policy(oh diba!) by typing secpol.msc in the run box.

2.       Locate Local Policies then Security Options

3.       Find Interactive Logon: Do not display last user name and make sure it is disabled.

This is quite useless because it is already disabled. I tried another trip to the registry and did the following:

1.       Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\SpecialAccounts\UserList

2.       If that is in your registry then and if you locate your second user account then you are supposed to delete your own username.

This didn't work too. I don’t have that last bit in my registry. I am starting to get irritated now. Errrrrrrrrr! I’ll try one more command before I give it up as a bad job, I said. I have work to do.

The last command was the magic word! 

All I did was open Run (windows key+R) and typed tsdiscon.exe  and rebooted the PC and IT WORKED!I’m so brilliant at finding stuff *pats self in the shoulder* Im such a good job. Hehehe