Enable or Disable user account from

command line (CMD)

by Srini

To disable a user from logging into system, we can disable the account by opening computer
management console and double clicking on the entry for the user and then by selecting the
check button “Account is disabled”

We can do the same by just running a simple command from windows command line.

For example, to disable a user account named John we can run the below command.

Net user John /active:no

To re-enable the account :

Net user John /active:yes

In Windows 7, you need to run the above commands from elevated administrator command
prompt(See How to open elevated command prompt in Windows 7 ). You would get the below
error when you run them from normal command prompt.

System error 5 has occurred.

Access is denied.
Using wmic to disable user account

Below wmic command works for disabling a user account

wmic useraccount where name='john' set disabled=true

For re-enabling user account

wmic useraccount where name='john' set disabled=false

If run from command prompt without elevated admin privileges it would result in the below
error.

C:\>wmic useraccount where name='john' set disabled=false

Updating property(s) of
'\\MYPC\ROOT\CIMV2:Win32_UserAccount.Domain="mypc",Name="guest"'
ERROR:
Description = Generic failure

Successful account updation would be like below.

1
C:\>wmic useraccount where name='john' set disabled=false
Updating property(s) of
'\\MYPC\ROOT\CIMV2:Win32_UserAccount.Domain="MYPC",Name="john"'
Property(s) update successful.