Classic Shell: Forum

My work was recently forced to switch to Windows Vista, and the first things I did was add Classic Shell to get a remotely usable start menu. I've spent the last several weeks using various tweeks to make this into a useable operating system, and now I have reached the final hurdle: the login screen.

Basically, under windows XP on a domain, users could either log in to the domain or select local computer from a little drop-down menu. This incredibly reasonable and very useful feature is suspiciously absent, isntead requiring users to do some BS with typing in things and slash marks and generally having knowlegde and information that is not going to be readily available to the average user(in this case the machine name and local account names).

Unfortunately, the only other option is a stupidly-cluttered welcome screen(this is mainly aparrent in the computer lab where each system will rack up about 60 domain users by the end of the school year).

unfortunately, dispite my best efforts, I cannot find anything that provides a windows XP-style login screen. Since Classic Shell saved me from various other suspiciously-absent-yet-vital features in the past, I thought I'd pop in here and ask if either there already was one or if one could be implemented.

My only other option really is to start telling users they can't use the local machine account since I am not going to spend half an hour teaching every kid in the school how to type LONGCOMPLCIATEDMACHINENAMETHATSDIFFERENTONEVERYCOMPUTER\LOCALUSERNAMETHEYDONTKNOW.

Unfortunately, the domain dropdown is gone in all Windows releases after Windows XP and there is nothing that can be done about it. The best solution I have found so far is to type .\username to login locally... by using the full stop at least then you don't need to remember the computer name.

There was also a NoDomain registry value IIRC. You could try that.

1. In the Registry Editor, navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon
2. Create a new DWORD of NoDomainUI
3. Set the value of this DWORD to 1 (Enabled)
4. Reboot the machine


If the NoDomainUI value is enabled, Windows will always assume you are trying to logon to the local computer. To logon to the domain, it will force users to use the full UPN (user principal name): or domain\username. Does that help?

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I am a Windows enthusiast and helped a little with Classic Shell's testing and usability/UX feedback.

Unfortunately no

In practice, anything short of the the simple, uncomplicated drop-down system is useless. Just having to type a different complicated thing doesn't actually touch the root of the problem.

Nor does the other registry key, as we are on a domain. The goal here is it has to be simple enough for a first grader - which the old-style login easily was. There is no modification I have yet found that complicates it at all.

I guess we just won't use the computers while the domain controller is down.

The classic login screen? That's still one of my most missed features in newer Windows versions. I don't see it as impossible to accomplish, however. I've even thought of how it could be accomplished. Theoretically you could create your own LogonUI.exe that would use a classic login window interface (like the domain drop-down box with a username and password field) but would still use the Windows Vista+ Credential Provider architecture. The main problem with that though is it would be a lot of work and I'm not a programmer (as much as I'd like to try to create something like that). And on top of that, you may need to figure out how to patch other system files.

So basically if it were to happen, it would likely never happen with Classic Shell. It would be more likely to happen as its own standalone program (assuming someone would actually take the time to create such a program).