
Download and install the Windows 2003 Resource Kit from Microsoft.Ensure you’re logged in as admin or with an account that has admin rights.Step by step instructions to automatically log off a Windows user: For more information about how to back up and restore the registry, check out How to back up and restore the registry on the Microsoft Knowledge Base.

If you’re not comfortable with this (you can potentially f’up your Windows installation) skip to the next section. We’ll be making registry changes in these steps so make a backup first. Remember, you’ll need to be logged on as administrator or with an account with administrator privileges in order to configure Windows to automatically log off a user after a specified time period. Steps to configure an account to automatically log off Don’t worry though, it’s not terribly difficult if you know some Windows basics and follow the steps. If you’re not comfortable with any of that you might want to skip to the section at the bottom for a 3rd party utility to handle this for you.

In order to set up your machine to automatically log off an inactive user you’ll need to have admin rights to the machine, download a toolkit from Microsoft, and make some registry settings. I had to poke around for a while to figure out how to make Windows automatically log off a user it seems like it’s harder than it should be and I don’t know why something like this isn’t built right into the OS. Automatically Log Off Users via Registry Setting and Screensaver
