No users show up on WinXP welcome screen.

[flashbacck]

Hi, my friend's HP laptop is having a problem with Windows XP. It'll boot up, then go to the blue Welcome Screen. The problem is, there are NO user accounts to click on to login. Has anyone seen this before? I've tried googling, and nothing comes up, except for a bunch of people who had to reinstall.

Booting up in ANY mode (Safe, Last Known, etc) DOES NOT work. You just end up at the welcome screen.

Thanks for any help.

 

[Sunner]

Try pressing ctrl-alt-del and logging in as Administrator.

 

[flashbacck]

Originally posted by: Sunner
Try pressing ctrl-alt-del and logging in as Administrator.

Hey,
Yeah we tried ctrl-alt-del twice to get to bring up the old login screen. No username/passwords are accepted.

 

[Sunner]

Does that mean you know the password for the Administrator user, only it's not accepted? Or was it one of those preinstalled computers where people more often than not don't know the password?

 

[flashbacck]

Hi,
He knows the password, but nothing is being accepted.

It's alright, I think he's fixed it. He ended up pulling out the harddrive and using an external enclosure to get access to it on another computer. Then he restored the registry somehow. Thanks for your help though.

 

[Sianath]

Just FYI:

If a user account is not a member of the admin group, power users group, or users group it will not display on the Welcome Screen.

Also, if you log in with safe mode, you should see any account with admin rights on the welcome screen, but you won't see any account without admin rights.

292742 Users Are Missing from Welcome Screen in Safe Mode
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=292742

 

[flashbacck]

Originally posted by: Sianath
Just FYI:

If a user account is not a member of the admin group, power users group, or users group it will not display on the Welcome Screen.

Also, if you log in with safe mode, you should see any account with admin rights on the welcome screen, but you won't see any account without admin rights.

292742 Users Are Missing from Welcome Screen in Safe Mode
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=292742

well the problem was NO users were on the welcome screen. Not in any mode. There was nothing to click on except the shutdown icon.

 

[Sianath]

I understand. Just pointing out that it's possible to get into that scenario without there being some type of corruption, etc. A program running as the local admin could simply create a custom group, add all your user accounts to that group, and remove them from those three above. Instantly, no user account would show up on the page.

This isn't common by any means, but it's possible. 🙂

In that scenario, you can still hit ctrl_alt_del and manually type in the account. All it does is prevent them from showing on the welcome screen.

 

[tonymaro]

I have a Compaq Presario laptop doing the exact same thing.

To give you more info on the problem, I ran a password reset boot disk on it that I sometimes use to reset lost passwords. (www.theultimatebootcd.com)

It says there are NO user accounts in the registry. All accounts INCLUDING the administrator are gone.

Cool, huh?

I did some google'ing and found that everyone posting this problem (that specified) has a compaq or HP laptop with XP Home.