Is it possible to disable the user account picture in the Start me

  • Thread starter Thread starter Gabriel Lozano-Moran
  • Start date Start date
G

Gabriel Lozano-Moran

The subject says it all I guess. Is there a way to disable the user account
picture from the Start menu?
 
Hi,
Do you mean so that the system logs on without stopping at the logon window?
If so, open the command prompt with "run as administrator" and type "control
userpasswords2" (without the quotes). The select the user you want to bypass
and
uncheck "Users must enter a user name and password to use this computer".
(you must select the user before you uncheck the box)
 
No, I mean literally removing the pictures from the top of the Start menu in
Windows. Right now in Windows Vista you either see a duck, a cat, a dog, a
horse ... which I find very idiotic. I want to know if it is possible through
a policy setting or anything else to disable this picture so no picture is
displayed at all. Is this possible?
 
Hello Gabriel,

If you are using Business, Ultimate or Enterprise, then you can change this
via Group Policy:

Type gpedit.msc into the Start/Search box and press enter. Navigate to
Computer Configuration, expand to Administrative Templates, Control Panel,
User Accounts. In the right-hand pane, you should see the policy "Apply
the default user logon picture to all users".

Explanation of this policy:
This policy setting allows an administrator to standardize the logon
pictures for all users on a system to the default user picture. One
application for this policy setting is to standardize the logon pictures to
a company logo.

Note: The default user picture is stored at %PROGRAMDATA%\Microsoft\User
Account Pictures\user.bmp. The default guest picture is stored at
%PROGRAMDATA%\Microsoft\User Account Pictures\guest.bmp. If the default
pictures do not exist, an empty frame is displayed.

If you enable this policy setting, the default user logon picture will
display for all users on the system with no customization allowed.

If you disable or do not configure this policy setting, users will be able
to customize their logon pictures.

You can enable the policy, and remove the default user.bmp.
 
Hi Gabriel,

As Jane rightly says, if you try to use a blank bitmap then an empty frame
will be displayed. I have looked through the registry to see if there was a
means of achieving what you want, but have been unable to find anything.
However, there is a way. Right-click on the start orb and select
'Properties'. This will open the 'Taskbar and Start Menu Properties' dialogue
with the 'Start Menu' tab active. If you click on 'Classic Start menu' (you
may modify this if you wish by clicking on 'Customize' and changing the
options presented) and then click 'OK', you will find that when you next
click the start orb that the user account picture will have disappeared.
However, you will now be using the classic menu version that was used in
older versions of Windows such as Win 98SE. As far as I am aware, there is no
way of removing the user account picture from the start menu if you want to
use the default menu type.
Dwarf
 
Okay, thanks for the answers. I guess that showing the company logo is better
than showing a duck but still I would have loved the possibility to disable
the picture and the frame.
 
Back
Top