It would be nice to know which accounts has logged onto your computer or failed, especially if you are sharing a PC with other people or in a place where your PC can be easily accessed by other people. Fortunately, Windows has this feature built-in for quite a while. At least, it’s still available on Windows 7, Windows 8.1 and Windows 10.
Here is how to enable this feature on Windows.
Group Policy
If you are on a version of Windows that supports Group Policy editor, open it up and navigate to the following location.
Computer Configuration → Administrative Templates → Windows Components → Windows Logon Options
Then, double-click to open the policy “Display information about previous logons during user logon” and enable it.
Now log off and log back in to see what happens. The message must be acknowledged by the user before heading into the desktop.
Registry Editor
If you are on a version of Windows that doesn’t support Group Policy Editor, such as Windows 7 or Windows 10 Home, you can still use the Registry tweak to enable the feature.
Open Registry Editor and navigate to the following registry key.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System
Then create a new DWORD(32-bit) value called DisplayLastLongonInfo and set the value as 1.
What’s the catch?
It works the best for local accounts or domain accounts in domains of at least a Windows Server 2008 function level. The following warning message would show up if it didn’t meet this requirement and the user will not be able to log on.
The only way to get out this is to log in using a local account and revert the setting we just did above.