SOLVED No Users Being Displayed on Login Screen?

[your-evil-twin]

I turn on the computer and only one user, let's call it "User 1" is being displayed to sign in. There are 5 other users on this computer, but none of them show up at all on the bottom left corner. Additionally, when I sign into "User 1" the dropdown menu allowing you switch users shows no other users at all.

It's as if "User 1" is the only user on the computer, but when I go to the control panel and go to manage user accounts all 5 of the other users are there. I just can't switch or sign into them at all.

Very strange problem no else seems to have, I've tried googling for solutions but nothing works. I'm at my wit's end here. I feel like I've tried everything, but absolutely nothing with get those other users to show up on the login screen. I don't want to have to remake all 5 of those other users, and I don't even know if that would cause them to show up. Please help... any suggestions welcome.

 

[Trouble]

Very strange problem

Strange indeed.
Have you tried rebooting the machine into Safe Mode just to check if that provides any of the alternative users as a choice on the sign-in screen?
Presumably if they are showing in the Control Panel Users applet, then their respective profiles are also located in C:\Users??

 

[your-evil-twin]

I've tried safe mode, it's the same thing-- no other users show up in the login screen or dropdown menu. I suppose I could try it again, but I'm doubtful it will fix anything. Their profiles are still in C:/Users, yes.

 

[Trouble]

I wasn't thinking that it would necessarily fix anything, I was just wondering if there just might have been some third party software masking something and contributing to the problem.
Can you create a new user as a member of the local administrators group (not a standard user)?
IF so does that user then show up as would be expected?

 

[Trouble]

Right click the Start Button and choose Command Prompt (Admin) and in the command prompt window type
net user
hit enter
That should provide a list of users that Windows believes are on your computer.
Pick one, then type
net user <name> /active:yes (where <name> is the name you picked from your list of potential users)
hit enter
Should look something like this

 

[Regedit32]

What version of Windows 10 are you using?

Home, Professional etcetera ?

 

[your-evil-twin]

Right click the Start Button and choose Command Prompt (Admin) and in the command prompt window type
net user
hit enter
That should provide a list of users that Windows believes are on your computer.
Pick one, then type
net user <name> /active:yes (where <name> is the name you picked from your list of potential users)
hit enter
Should look something like this

View attachment 3290

I did this for one of the users not showing up, but it still not there. Should I try it for all of them?

I'm using Windows 10 Home.

 

[your-evil-twin]

This error showed up for one of the users... don't know what it means.

 

[Trouble]

what is produced when you just type
net user

 

[your-evil-twin]

what is produced when you just type
net user

All 6 of the users show up, plus Administrator, DefaultAccount, and Guest.

 

[Trouble]

I was hoping for a screen shot of the results in the command prompt window.

 

[your-evil-twin]

I was hoping for a screen shot of the results in the command prompt window.

 

[Trouble]

Thanks.
Work on the ones without a space in the user name and see if you can make any of them "/active:yes"
See if that changes anything with respect to your ability to see them as listed as alternative users to select from the signin screen.
For the one "Reggie Jr" you might try using quotes in the command prompt as
net user "reggie jr" /active:yes
And see if that works without producing the same error

 

[your-evil-twin]

The error went away when I used the quotes. All of them say the command completed successfully but still only 1 user is showing up.

 

[Trouble]

Are they all listed in the registry at
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList
WITH the appropriate ProfileImagePath pointing to their respective profile folders in C:\users\TheirName

 

[your-evil-twin]

Are they all listed in the registry at
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList
WITH the appropriate ProfileImagePath pointing to their respective profile folders in C:\users\TheirName

Yeah, they're all listed there.

 

[Trouble]

I asked in a post above

Can you create a new user as a member of the local administrators group (not a standard user)?
IF so does that user then show up as would be expected?

I didn't see your reply to that question.

 

[Trouble]

See if toggling the account off and then back on helps at all
net user "reggie jr" /active:no
hit enter
net user "reggie jr" /active:yes
If that doesn't seem to help then try adding him to the local administrators group and see if that changes anything
net localgroup administrators "reggie jr" /add
hit enter
Rapidly running out of ideas

 

[your-evil-twin]

I decided to just reset windows in the settings and see if that would do anything, and it actually fixed it. Everything's working now. Thanks for the help though.

 

[mozilla343]

I have EXACTLY THE SAME ISSUE now, symtoms are the same. Also newly created users don't show up in login screen. Luckily it is possible to sign in to all accounts, by using "Other User" method, like similarly schools or enterprises have this in their computers, which are in domain. (I think it is also possible with Remote Desktop, if hidden accounts are Administrators or Standard users in Remote Desktop Users group, you can set that up from your only accessable account too). It's a little uncomfortable, because every time you need to enter username too, but it works. Yeah, you can say that resseting Windows fixed you're problem, but it wasn't entirely 100% correct solution.

---

Enable "Other User" method using registry:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System]
"dontdisplaylastusername"=dword:00000001

or to disable this and return to default way, just change 1 to 0 or delete this entry.

---

I'm also currently looking for the right solution, I dont wan't to reset Windows just for this issue, but so far I didn't find any solution. Maybe "dirty" upgrade to the same Windows version will do that fix, but I don't want to do that now, because in my opinion also this fix is not entirely correct solution.

I have Windows 11 and Users folder is located in drive D, in this way D:\Users, by using this tutorial: Move Users Folder Location in Windows 10, and everything worked, no single one issue or programs trying to access %userprofile% in drive C. This is also supported by Microsoft: Upgrade to Windows versions that is before Windows 10 is blocked if Users and ProgramData directories are changed. I really believe that this is not somehow connected in any way to this issue, because your-evil-twin said that in his computer users folders were been in C:\Users folder:

Their profiles are still in C:/Users, yes.

In my case this problem happened after I tried to delete a partition by using Disk Managment, which was meant for temporary use, but for unknown reasons it didn't allow me to delete this partition (button greyed out), so instead I was using diskpart in command prompt. Now it started to clean this partition, but in the end it also failed, saying something about pagefile (later I looked up pagefile settings and pagefile was automatically regulated for all drives). And from this moment Windows Explorer restarted and didn't load back correctly, I couldn't browse my files nor even open Start menu. So I decided to reboot the computer and after that I find out that I'm unable to sign in to any account. Later I found out that Windows for unknown reasons randomly changed drive letters for all partitions except for Windows partition C: This is what caused to be unable to sign in to any accounts, because Windows couldn't find D:\Users folder anymore. After that I did this - first answer by Jason Corchuelo, which allows me to open command promt from the login screen, then I opened Disk Managment and changed drive letters back as they must be (this can't be easily done from WinRE (Windows Recovery Enviorement), because changes made in Disk Managment from WinRE only affects WinRE not the actual Windows OS. (To do that in WinRE as well, I guess you would need to load registry hives and et cetera.) I rebooted computer again and I was able to sign in to my account again (which was the last one used before Windows Explorer crash), but every other accounts dissapeared from login screen.

I agree it's a long read, but I hope it will help for someone else who gets this trouble too.