Monday, August 31, 2015

Enable or Disable Local User Account on Windows 10 Home Edition

I am often amazed by some of the changes that Microsoft makes to various versions of their Operating System, and Windows 10 is sadly no exception. Suppose that you have installed Windows 10 Home Edition on your Computer and that you wish to temporarily "Disable" (NOT Remove) a User Account on your PC.

As of right now there is no way to do this through any User Interface on Windows 10 Home Edition. To disable an User Account, do the following:


  1. Right-Click on the Start Menu, then choose "Run". 
  2. Type "cmd" and press enter to run command prompt. 
  3. Right click on the Command Prompt Icon in the Taskbar, and choose "Run as Administrator". 
  4. Enter the following command and hit ENTER to disable the account in question:
          net user USERNAME /active:no

Here "USERNAME" is the actual you with to disable. For example if you have a User Account called "Joe" you would run this command:

          net user Joe /active:no

To enable the account again, run the following:

          net user USERNAME /active:yes

I have no idea what removing this feature accomplishes for Microsoft, other then annoying the crap out of Administrators, but here is a way around it in case anyone needs it. 
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11 comments:

  1. AnonymousJune 30, 2016 at 9:03 AM

    Don't forget to encase the username in " If it has more than one word

    ReplyDelete
  2. RemoOctober 26, 2016 at 10:32 AM

    Back to the command line
    win 10 beconmes more and more unusable...

    ReplyDelete
  3. DigiOz MultimediaOctober 26, 2016 at 1:00 PM

    Unfortunately that seems to be the case as of right now.

    ReplyDelete
  4. AnonymousOctober 30, 2016 at 9:55 AM

    Agree--just ran into this same thing and could not believe the stupidity. Thanks for showing the way around it from the cmd prompt.

    ReplyDelete
  5. AnonymousNovember 8, 2016 at 12:09 PM

    Windows 10 Pro is the same.

    Thanks for the command :-)

    ReplyDelete
  6. AnonymousDecember 25, 2016 at 2:24 PM

    In Windows Pro and above you cab use GUI to do this. Just type: lusrmgr.msc and then you can disable accounts in Properties of each account.
    /Roman

    ReplyDelete
  7. AnonymousMay 10, 2017 at 5:46 AM

    Works with Windows 8 Home.
    Thanks.

    ReplyDelete
  8. AndyOctober 31, 2017 at 1:15 PM

    "Unusable" lol

    What kinda fail admins do we have here? Usually you don't deactivate them manually anyway, but do it with a GPO.
    And clicking through menus instead of knowing the fucking simple command for doing it just shows you a bad Windows admin.

    The same guys that are always asking for the most simple batch scripts and refuse to use powershell.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. DigiOz MultimediaOctober 31, 2017 at 2:40 PM

      Keep in mind The target audience for this article is the Home user that does not have a network administrator to manage permissions.

      Delete
  9. UnknownJanuary 29, 2018 at 11:39 PM

    I had real trouble re-enabling some user accounts I had disabled. The only account that was left enabled was a Standard account so I couldn't make any changes as User Access Control denied any changes being made to system including the one detailed here. I ended up following a video on YouTube to access PC in Safe Mode to change the account to an Admin account which then allowed me to proceed through UAC.

    ReplyDelete
  10. DigiOz MultimediaJanuary 30, 2018 at 12:04 AM

    Do you happen to have a link to that video you could post here as a reference?

    ReplyDelete