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How To: Make an Invisible User Account in Vista

By Matthew Michaels ⋅ October 11, 2008 ⋅ Email This Article Email This Article ⋅ Print This Post Print This Post ⋅ Post A Comment
invisiblevista-300x170 How To: Make an Invisible User Account in Vista

Invisible Users

Okay so your sharing your computer with your parents or using the family computer and your sick of them going through your stuff, you could make a new account and password protect it but then that will make your parents suspicious your hiding something so what do you do? You make a an invisible user account of course, but wait… Is it really worth it? It’s virtually like having your own pc cause they wont be able to see any of that users documents or folders (including temporary, history ect..) and best of all THE USER WON’T APPEAR IN THE PARENTAL CONTROLS LIST OF ACCOUNTS.

1) Click on theStart Menu.

2) Where it says “Start Search” enter regedit and hit Enter.

3) A pop up will come up (UAC), just click Continue.

4) Once in regedit go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon

5) In the left panel, right click on Winlogon and click New and click Key.


6) Type SpecialAccounts and press Enter.Below is how you should be doing so far.

specialaccounts.jpg

7) In the left panel, right click on SpecialAccounts and click New and click Key.

8) Type UserList and press Enter.

9) In right panel of UserList, right click on a empty area and click New then click DWORD (32bit) Value.

10) Type in the name of the user account that you want to hide and press Enter.eg: Everyday Account. Below is how you should be doing so far:

userlist_dword32.jpg

11) In the right panel, right click on the user account name and click Modify.

12) To hide the user account - Type 0 and click OK. (number zero not the letter)

Whenever you want to use the account just unhide the it by typing 1 instead of zero.

modify_user_account.jpg

13) Close regedit and your done, enjoy your secret account =).

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Discussion

19 comments for “How To: Make an Invisible User Account in Vista”

  1. I was just wondering if you know how or if it was possible to make an invisible user account for windows XP
    thanks

    [Reply]

    Posted by John Ramthun | December 17, 2007, 11:48 am

  2. how the fuck do you login?

    [Reply]

    Posted by yo | January 16, 2008, 6:22 am

  3. How do you login into the account :wink: ?

    Ive set up everything you asked, just dont know how to log in!

    [Reply]

    Posted by Martin | March 9, 2008, 7:00 am

  4. Oh nevermind i get it now :shock: , but what i was looking for is something that you can have an invisible account that you can login into at the welcome screen, because i want to use my sisters laptop without her knowing lol, her account is passworded so i cant change it to (1) when i want to use it!

    [Reply]

    Posted by Martin | March 9, 2008, 7:04 am

  5. to login press CTRL+ALT+DELETE at the same time before you login to any other account. you will be promoted to enter the user account name and password .

    [Reply]

    Posted by james | March 15, 2008, 2:31 pm

  6. YOU ROCK!!! i made hidden account i just dont know how to log in, i tried the CTRL+ATL+DELETE thing but it isnt working!

    [Reply]

    Posted by Lola | March 25, 2008, 5:09 am

  7. CTRL+ALT+DEL doesn’t works on Vista…. so u cant log on at the welcome screen

    [Reply]

    Posted by Ned | April 6, 2008, 4:14 am

  8. Try press CTRL+ALT+DEL, but press DEL 2 X, not 1.

    Works for me.

    [Reply]

    Posted by Rubella | April 11, 2008, 11:47 am

  9. uhmm well that didn’t really work for me….maybe my Vista is retarted but yea….i tried to do that and then when I clicked the CTRL+ALT+DEL buttons it didn’t work…am I supposed to click them like i would to get the task manager up or am i supposed to click them ALL at the SAME TIME?

    [Reply]

    Posted by jimmi | April 25, 2008, 1:43 am

  10. quote-I was just wondering if you know how or if it was possible to make an invisible user account for windows XP
    thanks-
    download tweak ui here
    http://windowsxp.mvps.org/tweakui.htm
    when u open it click logon and uncheck where it says show account on welcome screen under the account u want hiddin
    when logged out press ctrl+alt+del twice fast to get a clasic logon prompt then enter youe username and password to get in this only works on xp

    [Reply]

    Posted by Firebinder | May 1, 2008, 2:42 pm

  11. To make it work, you should create your account first via User Accounts. Then edit the registry which then hides or shows the user account in the login/welcome screen.

    [Reply]

    Posted by mike | May 17, 2008, 11:05 am

  12. Don’t listen to this guy!! Unless you configure some other options beforehand, this tweak will not only hide the account you want to hide but also DISABLE ANY LOGIN ON THE OTHER ACCOUNTS, essentially bricking your OS and forcing a reinstall! MAKE SURE YOU ENABLE THE ALTERNATE NT-STYLE LOGON SCREEN BEFORE DOING THIS!

    Sincerely,
    The Guy who just got SCREWED BY BAD ADVICE

    [Reply]

    Posted by Tai | June 8, 2008, 1:50 pm

  13. You log in by pressing ctrl alt delete twice.

    [Reply]

    Posted by Jocelyn | July 24, 2008, 2:47 am

  14. So if you download Itunes onto the secret account, It wont show up at all on the regular/admin account?

    [Reply]

    Posted by Eddy | July 29, 2008, 8:36 am

  15. Yea, I think windows home premium has issues with the alt control delete trick to logining in, anyone have an alternative, for the xp hidden account its the same process but only different in the way that the files that you need to create for vista, is already there. Are there alternative ways of logining in?

    [Reply]

    Posted by Jas | August 17, 2008, 5:04 pm

  16. Go to Windows Registry and edit:

    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System
    dontdisplaylastusername = 1

    Make sure you know your user names because it will show you two input boxes under the Vista Logon Screen instead of User Icons (user and pass edit boxes, like in old NT style)!

    It works perfectly! Good luck guys!
    Thanks

    [Reply]

    Posted by Wi JB | August 20, 2008, 6:45 am

  17. Is there a better way to do this in Vista (possibly a program?), where you can access the hidden account from the welcome screen without changing the registry back and forth to use it?
    Thanks

    [Reply]

    Posted by Jon | September 9, 2008, 10:08 am

  18. I upgraded my system to Vista Ultimate from XP Pro where I had a hidden account, (double hit on ctrl-alt-del got me the login box)

    I have the same issues as everyone else, I can’t seem to login to this new hidden account as I used to be able to do when I used XP.

    Has anyone resolved this?

    [Reply]

    Posted by Barry | September 28, 2008, 7:22 am

  19. Same… Its invisible, but I really need to log on to it somehow.. any combination ctrl+alt+del is not working… :\

    [Reply]

    Posted by Eagle | October 7, 2008, 8:56 pm

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