Windows XP Home Edition: The Missing Manual

Setting Up the Logon Process

Once you’ve set up more than one account, the dialog box that greets you when you turn on the PC (or when you relinquish your turn at the PC by choosing Start→Log Off) looks something like Figure 16-8. But a few extra controls let you, an administrator, set up the logon screen for either more or less security—or, put another way, less or more convenience.

Open the User Accounts program in the Control Panel, and then click “Change the way users log on or off.” As shown in Figure 16-6, Windows XP now offers you two extremely important logon options.

Figure 16-7. These two options have enormous ramifications. The first governs the appearance of the Welcome screen shown in Figure 16-8. The second lets one person duck into his own account without forcing you to log off, as described on Section 16-6. These options are related—you can’t turn off the first without first turning off the second.

“Use the Welcome Screen”

Under normal circumstances, the logon screen presents a list of account holders when the PC is first turned on, as shown in Figure 16-8.

If you’re especially worried about security, however, you might not even want that list to appear. If you turn off “Use the Welcome screen,” each person who signs in must type both his name and password into blank boxes—a very inconvenient, but secure, arrangement (Figure 16-7). (You can’t turn off “Use the Welcome ...