Have you ever noticed the difference in the way you login on your computer in your office and at home? You must be entering your username and password in your office computer in a small login window and you must just be clicking on your user name in your home computer to login. You may not be able to change the login style on your office computer because there the settings and such features are controlled by the system administrators.
In this post I will describe how to change the login screen style. Simple style is the one in which you see the names of all the accounts listed on one screen and you can login to them by simply clicking on the username. Advanced login screen is the one which gives you small login box and you have to enter both username and the password to login. Advanced login screen is required in offices because if your office computers are running on a domain then this is the only login screen which can be applied. This is the main reason why you don’t see the interactive login screen in office computers.
Now let us go through the steps for toggling between these login styles on a stand-alone computer.
Step 1: Click on the ‘Start’ Menu and then open ‘Control Panel’.
Step 2: In ‘Control Panel’ look for ‘User Accounts’ and then open the same.
Step 3: In ‘User Accounts’ window look for an option called ‘Change the way user log on and off’.
Here you will find a check box titled ‘Use Welcome Screen’. This is the option which controls the visibility of either of the two login styles. If the box is checked then you will get an interactive login screen which will give you an iconic display of usernames on the login screen. If the box is unchecked then you will get the advanced screen for typing the username and the password manually to login.
Step 4: Since in this post we have to change the login screen to advanced style, so we need to uncheck the option called ‘Use Welcome Screen’ and apply the changes.
There are few other settings which indirectly control the behaviour of login screens. For example if your computer is connected to a domain then you cannot apply simple interactive welcome screen on it. If you have turned the offline files feature of your computer ON even then you cannot turn the interactive welcome screen ON. You cannot turn ON the advanced login screen if Switch User feature of Windows is ON. So if you are trying to make such a change but it is not working, or if the options are greyed out, then check for the settings mentioned above as they might be controlling the same.
