My computer said that other users were logged in?

I had my computer on standby all night. I woke up this morning and decided to turn it off. When i pressed enter my computer turned back to its normal mode and asked for my password to log in. at this screen I pressed the turn off button... when i did this a prompt came up that said something to the effect 'other users are logged into this computer, are you sure you want to turn it off'

1. Im running wireless on a desktop
2. My wireless is 'supposed' to be password protected.
3. My roommate has a laptop connected to the same network, but i checked his comp and he wasnt logged into my computer.

Is it possible someone was snooping around my computer.. if so, they would have to crack my computer and wireless password??? or is this just a normal occurence?

BTW, I am running XP.

I posted this at yahoo answers and the people there really werent't much help.

Well, be more specific.

Do you have a wired router with a wireless capability for laptops an such?

You have to have the service is coming into your residence.

How and who is providing the service?

You do not provide enough info to be helpful.

Try just "logging off" and see what comes up.

I have seen this before where people will set themselves up as the administrator and then create a personal account for themselves on their own computer.

If it is your computer you are the administrator too.

Hmmm, I've not played with XP for a while now, but a few ideas....

How many user areas do you have set up? Is one of them a dedicated Admin account? or do you (as most people do) just use your own account as the Admin?

Did you have any auto updates?

I remember that it is possible to set up a hidden user account - most likely the person would need actual access to your comp and admin password (which is a piece of pee to get hold of) - maybe someone could do that remotely, that would prob take a fair amount of hacking determination/skilz... But then again Google usually brings up those type of things fairly easily.

Maybe you weren't actually logged off to begin with. Do you remember logging off before you went to bed?

Originally posted by Oneolddude
Well, be more specific.

Do you have a wired router with a wireless capability for laptops an such?

You have to have the service is coming into your residence.

How and who is providing the service?

You do not provide enough info to be helpful.

Try just "logging off" and see what comes up.

I have seen this before where people will set themselves up as the administrator and then create a personal account for themselves on their own computer.

If it is your computer you are the administrator too.

its a wireless router that i use. i have a little wireless usb adapter so i can use my desktop wirelessly. I have internet provided by my cable company.. the internet goes into the wirless router and then spreads to my landlord/friends laptop, and my desktop.

Ill try it again when i get home and see what happens... i put my computer on sleep and when i turned it off i was pretty sure i was logged off because it said to enter my password to log-in?

also i am the admin, and i personally password protected the wireless router a couple of weeks ago when i moved into this new house.

reply to post by hikix


This usually has nothing to do with the network or internet connection. Your problem probably has to do with fast user switching.

When you boot your computer, do you have more than one account to pick from when you get to the login screen? For example my computer has two user accounts, mine and my wife's. Most people have something like mom, dad, sister, admin, or whatever. These are just local user accounts that don't have anything to do with the network.

By default remote access to these accounts is usually turned off, so they're not something you can log in with over the network unless you set that up yourself (which actually doesn't even work half the time). Typically these accounts can only be logged in to from the computer they exist on.

If fast user switching is enabled then when you click start and then click log off, it will bring up a dialog box with two options. The first is switch user and the second is log off. Both options take you back to the log in screen.

But when you log off you literally log off. All your programs are shut down and that account is released from memory. You're taken back to the log in screen.

The switch user option also allows you to log in with a different user account, but it DOES NOT log off the first account. It just leaves it running in the background along with all the programs that user had running. It's still going, you just can't see it.

So if you needed to log into a different account like mom's real quick so she can check her facebook, but you don't want to stop what you're doing you can just switch user. Then when mom is done she can log off and you can switch back to your account without having to restart all your programs again because you never really logged off for real.

The reason Windows gives you the warning message.

Say you're writing and email and in the middle someone else needs to use their account. So, you switch but when they're done they shut the computer down! You'd lose your unfinished email and anything else you were working on when you switched user. So, when Windows detects that other user accounts are still running it gives you this warning.

Most likely what happened is the last time another account was logged off like say mom's account for an example, they pressed switch user instead of log off, so Windows is just letting you know their programs are still running in the background. If you want you can switch back to that account and log it out properly before shutting down, or simply let Windows shut it down for you losing anything that might not have been saved.

However, if you don't have any other user accounts, you may have to worry about malware or a virus that has created some kind of alternate account. But that's unlikely. No viruses that come to mind work like that, that I can think of.

More than likely it's nothing to worry about. I get this message all the time, almost every time I shut down because I'll be playing on the computer and my wife will need to check her mail. I don't want to stop what I'm doing so I'll switch to her user account and then one of two things will happen.

Either she'll try to shut down instead of logging off because she forgot I was logged in and she'll get the warning message and she gets all freaked out, or she'll click switch user sometimes instead of log off thinking they're the same thing.

So, then when I'm done and shut the computer off Windows will warn me the wife's account is still logged in. Typically it's nothing to worry about.

[edit on 18-4-2010 by tinfoilman]