login - Better user switching UI in Windows 7?

25
2014-01
  • Joel Coehoorn

    I have a laptop running windows 7 pro that is joined to a domain. I use the laptop for home and work stuff, and to keep the two separate I login to a domain account at work and a local machine account at home.

    Unfortunately, the UI in Windows 7 for switching between users in this situation is... painful. It works for home-only users, because every account has a nice large button you can easily click (you don't even need to log out). It works for most domain computers because you generally only log in to the domain. But in this situation, where I'm changing between domain and local almost every time I log in, it just doesn't work.

    I particularly don't like having to type out the machine name when changing to the local login, but I'm also annoyed that I have to go through two screens just to get that far in the first place. I'm hoping there's a registry hack or something that will trigger the old WinXP-style login prompt, because then it's just two extra keystrokes to switch from domain to local or vice versa.

    As a side issue, I recently became the network admin a small college. The network I inherited has set up the users to have administrator access with their normal account on the machine issued to them. This was a popular policy, and therefore something that's difficult to fix. I would like to set up something for my users (especially those with laptops) where they only have administrator access when logging in to their local account. Their e-mail and erp app would be tied to the domain login, keeping them from running as administrator most of the time but still allowing that access when they need/want it. But few of them would know enough to be able to type the computer name to gain access to the local account, making this a non-starter.

    Any ideas on a better way to switch back and forth?

    • Answers
    Know someone who can answer? Share a link to this question via email, Google+, Twitter, or Facebook.

    Related Question

    login - Logging in to Windows 7 with one specific user account is very slow. Why?
  • ChimpBoy

    I am running Windows 7 Home Premium (64 bit) and I have created 3 user accounts, two regular users and one administrator.

    When logging in as the administrator or as one of the user accounts I get to a usable desktop in about 2-3 seconds.

    The other user account consistently takes about 10 seconds to login. I have deleted it and recreated it twice, using a different user name the second time and yet it is still 3-4 times slower to login that the other accounts.

    Anyone have any ideas what the problem might be or how to fix it? Is there some special registry magic required to finally kill off a user that the control panel delete doesn't do?

    Is it a coincidence that the slow account is always the first in the list of accounts at bootup? (first on the left)?


    • Related Answers
  • eleven81

    Try the following:

    • Delete the affected user account in the control panel
    • Delete the user profile and user directory manually
      • Delete the c:\users\username\ directory completely
    • Restart the computer
    • Create the account
    • Log in to this account for the first time
    • Restart the computer
    • Log in to this account for the second time

    The second log in time for this newly created account should be as quick as the other users'.

  • ChimpBoy

    This is so strange I can't belive it.

    In the user account with the slower login I had 'personalized' the desktop to remove the wallpaper and have a solid black desltop.

    When I undid this personalization and went back to one of the default themes with a wallpaper set, login time zipped back up to 2-3 seconds.

    The other user accounts have one of the standard themes with backgrounds set as well.

    So a solid colour desktop instead of wallpaper appears to slow login time by 10 seconds. Set a wallpaper and it logs in fast again. It works for me, but can anyone else confirm that?

  • Area 51

    @chimpboy,

    yeah, so true, having a solid color desktop wallpaper would slow down the log in in windows 7, i used to have a black solid color wallpaper back in xp and vista and i tried it in win7, strange may it seem but so true, it slows down the log in time, so i just settled in to a personalized doggie wallpaper, and the log in time is so much faster...

    im using 32 bit only. ultimate win7. and same experience as yours..

    --decoder