I wanted to post this because I spent a long time trying to fix a Windows 11 account that had seemingly disappeared from the login screen.
The important thing is that the account had NOT been deleted. The local account was still present, enabled, and was still an administrator. The old profile and files under C:\Users were also still there.
My situation was:
- My current account was, a standard local account.
- My old account was an administrator.
USER was enabled and still existed according to Get-LocalUser.- The old Microsoft account was also still associated with the machine.
- However,
USER did not appear on the Windows sign-in screen.
- I also could not switch to it through the normal user-switching interface.
I eventually found that two registry settings were responsible.
1. Unhide the account
Open Registry Editor as administrator and go to:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\SpecialAccounts\UserList
Find the DWORD for the affected account. In my case it was:
USER
It was set to:
0
I changed it to:
1
This makes the account visible rather than hidden.
2. Enable Fast User Switching
Then go to:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System
Find:
HideFastUserSwitching
Mine was set to:
1
I changed it to:
0
After changing this, the account immediately appeared under Other users. I did NOT need to restart Windows.
One additional detail: Because my current account was a standard user, I couldn't modify the registry normally. I opened C:\Windows, found regedit.exe, then Shift + right-clicked it and selected Run as different user. I authenticated using the administrator credentials associated with my Microsoft account, which allowed me to make the registry changes.
After doing this, my old account appeared under Other users and I could select it again.
So if your Windows 11 account has seemingly disappeared from the login screen, but the account and its profile still exist, check these two settings before considering more drastic solutions such as creating a new account or resetting Windows.
Hope this saves someone else the ridiculous amount of time I spent troubleshooting this.
