Showing Administrator on Welcome Screen

It's often asked how one can go about showing the Administrative account on the Windows Welcome Screen with Windows XP. It seems that as soon as you've created, with XP Pro, an account with admin privileges the account is no longer listed and it's not listed at all with Windows XP Home Edition.

Well, first off, there's no real reason to do this. Just press CTRL + ALT + DEL twice in a row while you're at the Welcome Screen and then type in Administrator under the user name and the password. (Password is, by default, blank generally. So unless you set one up then it's probably blank.)†

Yet, even with it being this simple, people still want to have it listed there. So, without further ado:

Showing the Administrator Account on the Windows Welcome Screen:

 Before attempting the following make sure you read and understand Registry Editing Warning.

1. Click the Start button
2. Click Run
3. Type regedit
4. Click OK
5. Dig down to:
   
   



6. Right-click in the right hand pane
7. Select "New" > "DWORD value"
8. Name the value Administrator
9. Double click the new DWORD value and give it a value of 1 in hexadecimal format
10. Click OK
11. Close the Registry Editor
12. Reboot to see the effect

† If you do not know the Administrator password (though why you'd be at this particular page looking for that information is beyond the scope of the of our understanding) the page you're actually looking for is here: Password Problems

OS: XP > Advanced
Date: 01/15/06

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