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Tech news: This segment will return on a future episode of The Geekcast
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Test A Geek: Enjoy a new edition of Test A Geek
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How To: Opt out of unsolicited mail, calls and cookies
The New York Times a while back rounded up ways to opt out of solicitations online, from junk snail mail, to telemarketing calls, to Doubleclick web site ad cookies. Here’s a quick list of each type of opt-out:
Phone solicitations: donotcall.gov
Junk snail mail: Direct Marketing Association: http://www.the-dma.org/consumers/offmailinglist.html
Email: “Whatever you do, do not respond to an unsolicited e-mail message when it gives you the option to opt out of receiving more e-mail. That is a trick used by spammers to confirm they hit a live address.”
Credit card offers: OptOutPrescreen.com
Doubleclick ad cookies: Ad Cookie Opt-out
Lexis Nexis public database: Opt Out of Lexis Nexis: http://www.lexisnexis.com/terms/privacy/data/remove.asp
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Ask A Geek: This segment will return on a future episode of The Geekcast
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Hack: Hide user accounts from the Windows XP Welcome screen
The Windows XP Welcome screen. Pretty pictures for each user account. What a nice thought on Microsoft’s part. The only trouble is – I want to create an administrator account, and not have others tempted to try getting into it while they are on my computer.
When windows XP is not joined to a domain, it displays a welcome screen when it first boots:
The welcome screen displays all of the local users on the system, except the built-in administrator account that was created during setup. If we want to hide a specific user from the list, we need to create a special value under this registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows
NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\SpecialAccounts\UserList
Under this key you simply create a new DWORD value – the name matches the users name exactly, and the value is one of the following (Decimal format)
0 – Hides the user just from the welcome screen
1 – The user is shown
Before you start putting values in this key, I want to warn you. This tip is particularly dangerous. If you make the wrong move, you could make it nearly impossible to get back into your system. Don’t blame me if you hose your system!
To disable the users I want, I browse to the registry key on my system. Now I want to hide all of the accounts except one, so I add each of the accounts shown on the welcome screen, and give them a value of zero.
That’s all we need to do. I log off, and now I only see the one remaining account.
Here’s the big question. How do you log on as a hidden user? If you are running windows XP Professional you simply need to press CTRL-ALT-DEL twice, and the standard logon screen will be displayed. This has one pitfall – it will fail to work if a user is still currently logged in. If you are having trouble getting it to show, then reboot and press it twice before any users have logged in. Secondly, if you are running Windows XP Home, you will need to boot in safe mode to use the hidden account. The CTRL-ALT-DEL trick does not work for XP Home.
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The geek’s view: This segment will return on a future episode of The Geekcast.
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