Tip 67: Display the local Administrator account on the Windows XP Welcome screen

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

  1. Start a registry editor (e.g., regedit.exe).
  2. Navigate to the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\SpecialAccounts\UserList subkey.
  3. From the Edit menu, select New, DWORD Value.
  4. Enter Administrator as the Valuename, then press Enter.
  5. Double-click the new value, set it to 1, and click OK.
  6. Close the registry editor.
The Administrator account will now appear on the Welcome screen. Using these same steps you can also prevent an account from appearing on the Welcome Screen, thereby creating a "hidden" account. Enter a new Valuename equal to the accountname and set the corresponding registry account value to 1 to display the account or 0 to hide the account.

For example, to hide the account for user Bob, add a value named "bob" to the registry subkey identified in Step 2 and set the value to 0.

Another way to have the Administrator account appear on the Welcome Screen is by having the Administrator account as the only group member in the local group Administrators.

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There may be situations where you need to logon to the machine with an account you know to exist but that is not displayed on the Welcome Screen (like Administrator by default, or any other "hidden" account for that matter),

If you are using Windows XP Professional, press Ctrl+Alt+Delete two times to display the ("Classic") Log On To Windows dialog box. Now you can enter the account name to logon with in the User Name box, and enter the password for the account

Windows XP Home Edition users can’t log on using the Administrator account, which is prevented by account restrictions from logging on. Instead, you must start Windows XP in Safe Mode by pressing F8 at the beginning of the startup process. After you're up and running in Safe Mode, you can run User Accounts to create one or more new accounts.