How to Log in After Disabling All Users in Windows?
Have you ever been in a situation when you accidentally or curiously disabled all of the local user accounts and got locked out of your Windows PC? Now, you can turn ON your computer and stuck on the login screen thinking about how to log in to Windows after disabling all users. But all you see is a message that says, “Your account has been disabled. Please see your system administrator.”
There is nothing much a user can do in such a situation but reinstall the Windows. Reinstalling Windows comes at the cost of your valuable data. It will wipe all the documents and files stored in C drive (including Documents, Downloads, Desktop, etc.) and you will have to reinstall all your programs. This can be a huge and unaffordable loss depending upon the data you have stored on your computer.
SEE ALSO:
1. How to Change the Username or Account Name in Windows 11?
2. How to Unlock your Locked or Disabled Apple ID?
Regain Access or Log in to Windows 10, 8, or 7 after Disabling All Users
Luckily there exists a method to get into your PC even after disabling all user accounts. But you will have to do some advanced-level troubleshooting to get yourself into your locked-out PC. This tutorial explains the method to login into Windows PC after disabling all users.
The best part of this method is that you don’t lose your precious files/documents. Check out this video before proceeding for detailed steps:
NOTE: This tutorial works only if the Hard disk or Windows drive is not encrypted. This method fails on encrypted hard disk drives.
Now, after you have checked the process in the video, let’s check the steps in detail. You will need a Windows bootable USB or CD/DVD to regain access to your locked-out computer.
Step 1: Insert Bootable USB or CD/DVD and Boot from it
In this tutorial, we are using a Windows 10 PC that has a standard user account HELLPC, built-in Administrator (disabled), and built-in Guest (disabled) accounts. The user account HELLPC has been disabled manually. Now, all the user accounts on our test PC are disabled. When we try to log in, we see the following screen:
Insert the bootable Windows USB or CD/DVD into your PC and reboot the PC. Make sure you have set your PC to boot from USB or CD/DVD respectively. On startup, press any key to start booting from bootable Windows USB or CD/DVD.
SEE ALSO: How to Reduce Windows 10 Data Usage in 3 Quick Steps?
Step 2: Open Command Prompt and Go to Windows Installation Drive
After loading Windows installation files, Windows setup will start. You will see the following screen if you are using Windows 10, 8, or 7.
Stop right there. Don’t press Next. We just needed this screen. Here we will open the command prompt and make some necessary changes to already installed Windows on which all user accounts have been disabled. Press the Shift + F10 key combination on your keyboard, command prompt will open.
INFO: You can also use this Shift + F10 trick to create a Local account in Windows 11 Home.
The command prompt has loaded from a temporary partition ‘X‘. We need to find the partition (disk drive) on which Windows is already installed.
You can change the drive in the command prompt and check the content of the selected drive using the dir command. After finding the Windows drive, we will try to re-enable existing users so that we can log in to Windows (after disabling all users).
Step 3: Make Necessary Changes and Exit Windows Setup
Finally, you have found the Windows drive. It’s drive D in our case. Now let’s make some changes in the Windows > System32 directory and we are good to go.
We are going to make a copy of the cmd.exe file and rename it to some other utility that we can launch from the Windows login screen. If you remember, you can see an Ease of Access button on the login screen of Windows 7, 8, or Windows 10. Ease of Access utility is launched via utilman.exe. So, we can use the utilman.exe to solve our purpose.
cd Windows\System32 ren utilman.exe utilman.exe.bak copy cmd.exe utilman.exe
utilman.exe with cmd.exeHere we have created a backup of utilman.exe before making a copy of cmd.exe. So, the next time you launch Ease of Access on the Windows login screen, the Command prompt will open.
You can now close the command prompt and cancel the Windows installation setup.
Step 4: Launch the Command Prompt on the Login Screen
Remove bootable USB or CD/DVD from your PC and let Windows boot normally. On the login screen, you will still see your account as disabled. Click OK. Now, we will use that hack to enable user accounts and log in to Windows after mistakenly disabling all users.
On the user account selection screen, click on the Ease-of-Access button on the bottom-right corner of the screen (bottom-left corner for Windows 7) to launch CMD. We will use CMD to enable user accounts (after disabling them).
This will bring up the Command prompt instead of the Ease of Access menu. After the Command prompt has launched, you will notice that it has started in the C:\Windows\System32 folder and with Administrative privileges.
Now, we will use this command prompt to enable Windows users which have been disabled. You can enable every account on your system. Even you can create a new local account on your system with administrative privileges.
SEE ALSO:
1. How to Disable Login Screen Background Image in Windows 10?
2. How to Log in with a Microsoft Account in Windows 10?
Step 5: Enable User Accounts (after Disabling mistakenly) using CMD
You can check current users on your system by using the net user command. If you want to enable the Administrator account on your system, type the following commands:
net user Administrator /active:yes net user Administrator P@ssw0rd
Don’t forget to replace P@ssw0rd with the password that you want to set for the Administrator account.
Similarly, you can enable other accounts using net user command:
net user HELLPC /active:yes net user HELLPC P@ssw0rd
Don’t forget to replace HELLPC with username and ‘P@ssw0rd’ with the password that you want to set for the selected account.
If you want to create a new user after disabling all users in Windows, use the following command:
net user /add <username> <password>
Don’t forget to replace <username> & <password> with the name and password of the new user. To provide the newly created user with administrative privileges, use the following command:
net localgroup administrators <username> /add
Replace <username> with the username of the newly created user.
SEE ALSO: A to Z list of all Windows CMD commands.
Step 6: Restart your Computer and Login After Disabling All Users
Close the command prompt and restart your computer.
After rebooting Windows, you will see that all your disabled user accounts have been enabled and are visible on the login screen. Select the user you want to log in with and enter the password that we have set in the previous step. That’s it, you can now successfully log in to your computer on which you were locked out due to disabling all users.
Step 7: Reverting the Changes Made to Windows
It’s time to revert the changes we made to the system. This process is even harder. If you try to rename utilman.exe.bak to utilman.exe using CMD or via GUI, you will get an Access denied error even with Administrator rights.
So, we will first take ownership of utilman.exe.bak and after that, we will rename it back to utilman.exe. But before that go to the C:\Windows\System32 folder and delete the existing utilman.exe which is a copy of cmd.exe.
utilman.exe from System32 folderAfter that, we need to take ownership of utilman.exe.bak file. You can take ownership via Security settings in Properties or by using a simple Registry key which adds Take Ownership to the right-click context menu. We have used the Registry method to take ownership.
Now, you can rename it back to utilman.exe. Select utilman.exe.bak file, press F2 on the keyboard to rename it. Now, change its name to utilman.exe and press Enter.
You may see additional UAC and File Control prompts, simply click Yes and OK to continue.
SEE ALSO: How to Open Command Prompt or PowerShell in Current Folder in Windows?
Log in to your Windows PC after Disabling All Users Accounts
You have successfully logged in to your system after you had accidentally disabled all the user accounts. Now, make sure to remember your passwords to avoid such situations in the future. You need to pay close attention while making changes to Windows files in the System32 folder or you may break your Windows permanently.
Hope you liked this tutorial. Feel free to comment if you face any problems. You may also subscribe to our newsletter and get such cool tricks directly into your inbox.
