up vote 0 down vote favorite
share [g+] share [fb]

One of my favorite features on ubuntu is how there is a drop down of all the users on my machine. Then I can select one of them and I am immediately switched to another user.

Then on windows7, I must open the windows menu, click an arrow, click 'Switch User', then I am brought to the login screen and then finally I click the other user I want to use.

Not the end of the world, but it certainly gets tiresome if I switch accounts a lot.

I do not have passwords on any of my user accounts. Is there a way to make win7 work like ubuntu in this regard? Even a script would be great.

Thanks for reading!

link|improve this question
Quick tip - on ubuntu multiple users are logged on to different virtual terminals, so you can quickly switch with just keys. In X (GUI) ctrl-alt-F7 should be your first login, and higher F keys may have different user's sessions.(although if memory serves me correctly some distros leave 7 or 8 for console logging so one of them may be blank/text - use alf-f1 to switch from text-consoles). – Greg Jul 29 '11 at 0:18
Some distros (actually, most of them in my experience, but I don't know for sure) actually put their text log on vterm1, and X sessions starting at vterm7. In general, though, the X sessions have to be somewhere, and there's only 9 options to try, so just look around for it. – jcrawfordor Jul 29 '11 at 4:11
feedback

1 Answer

up vote 1 down vote accepted

I must open the windows menu, click an arrow, click 'Switch User',

Win+L.

Even a script would be great.

The tscon command can be used to connect to another Terminal Services session (qwinsta for a list). Unfortunately, if the target session's account has no password, tscon will not be allowed to connect to the session (due to the "Only allow blank passwords for console logins" restriction). You can get around this by running tscon under the LocalSystem account with psexec -si tscon <id>. It's not very convenient, though.

Task Manager has a "Users" tab with a "Connect" option, but the same password restrictions apply.

There used to be a few programs that offerered Alt+Tab-like user switching... One of them was part of Microsoft PowerToys for Windows XP, later discontinued; the other I can't find right now, and I think it was limited to XP too.

link|improve this answer
Thanks for your help! – funGhoul Jul 29 '11 at 0:03
feedback

Your Answer

 
or
required, but never shown
discard

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.