Windows – Why is the guest account missing/broken in Windows 10

user-accountswindows 10

In older versions of Windows and even in Windows 10 previews you could enable the built-in guest account in control panel

Control Panel\User Accounts\User Accounts\Manage Accounts

available guest account in older Windows versions

In Windows 10, the Guest entry is missing.

Using Computer Management or net user you can still enable the guest account, but even then it doesn't show up on the logon screen.

In the Local Security Policy secpol.msc:

Local Policies – User Rights Assignment – Deny log on locally

we can see guest listed, this wasn't the case in older versions of Windows.

After removing guest from that policy, it is listed on the logon screen and we can using it to log on.

However, the whole Explorer shell is crashing and restarting constantly. The desktop is blinking and you can't click anything.

So the guest account is totally broken.

There is a question on answers.microsoft.com about this showing that some code was quickly added to the control panel to not show the guest account. So Microsoft does know about the problem.

While I don't really expect anybody to know what they've done to break this, at least this explains why the guest account is currently not listed.

Best Answer

The Guest account is disabled by default in Windows 10. However, guest is a reserved word, so you should create a new account under a different name (such as "Visitor") then put it in the guests localgroup:

  1. Open command prompt window as administrator
  2. net user Visitor /add /active yes
  3. net user Visitor *
  4. When asked to set a password just press Enter twice (blank password).
  5. net localgroup users Visitor /delete
  6. net localgroup guests Visitor /add

You will have a Visitor (aka guest) account bestowed with all the powers of a normal guest account.

-- edit --
If you get the "System error 1376 has occurred." error, run: net localgroup and see what is the real name of the users and guests groups.
In german Windows (even after system language change) it is:
net localgroup Benutzer Visitor /delete and net localgroup Gäste Visitor /add

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