Fast User Switching allows a user of Mac OS X to switch accounts without logging out of the account they are currently in. There are a number of uses for this, from troubleshooting to managing workflow. The back end functionality comes from the CGSession binary located in /System/Library/CoreServices/Menu Extras/User.menu/Contents/Resources. There are a couple of options you can use with CGSession, -switchToUserID and -suspend. /System/Library/CoreServices/Menu Extras/User.menu/Contents/Resources/CGSession -switchToUserID 1022 If an account has no password then the switch should occur automatically. If there is password then you can simply bring up a login window using the following command (you can also switch to a given user id but it will ask you for…
-
-
Enable Fast User Switching for Windows (Command Line)
Browse to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftWindows NTCurrentVersionWinlogon in the registry and then change the value of the AllowMultipleTSSessions key to REG_DWORD of 1 (or back to 0 to disable). Very similar to how it works in Mac OS X. If you want to script this (eg – for a login script) then you can use the reg command, for example: reg add “hklmSOFTWAREMicrosoftWindows NTCurrentVersionWinlogon /v AllowMultipleTSSessions /t REG_DWORD /d “1” /f
-
Mac OS X: Fast User Switching
Fast User Switching is a feature in Mac OS X (and Windows for that matter) that allows you to switch user accounts without logging out of your computer. This allows multiple users to use the same computer without having privy to each others stuff and allows you a great way to leave the system if you have multiple people that use it (you don’t want others unlocking into your account, for example). Fast User Switching is disabled by default though. To enable fast user switching, open the System Preferences and click on the Accounts System Preference pane. Then, click on Login Options and click the Enable fast user switching checkbox. To enable Fast User…