Unlock computer when switch user is turned off?

You can use terminal services to remote into the locked computer. In Win7 click Start and type mstsc in the search box. At the top of the start menu those very smae letters will appear with an icon. Highlight it and press enter. A dialogue box opens titled, "Remote Desktop Connection." Type in the name of the computer, your credentials and eventually you are reminded that a user is currently logged in. You are asked if you want to continue because that will log them off! Hurray.
This way you do not have to hard power down the system, which is a real time saver in our environment. Not to mention the stress it puts on the O.S. and hardware of repeated hard power downs. We have over 18,000 students on our district...that's alot of locked user accounts.

why not just turn fast user switching back on? i appreciate its not what your asking but it would fix your problem,

failing that, nag said user who is causing the problem to log off when their finished

Try this hokieman: Fast User Switching - Vista Forums

Welcome to SF by the way!

QUOTE: In Windows 7 click Start and type mstsc in the search box. At the top of the start menu those very smae letters will appear with an icon. Highlight it and press enter. A dialogue box opens titled, "Remote Desktop Connection." Type in the name of the computer, your credentials and eventually you are reminded that a user is currently logged in. You are asked if you want to continue because that will log them off!
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hokieman91 this is exactly what orourkev was trying to do. So from the admin's computer, you would type mstsc and then you can type in the admin user/pass and enter the computer. the other user would be logged out and you logged in. then you log out and the system is free again.

hokieman91 said:

Also, when the remote user logs into the locked machine, the locked user's session is still running (verified that after logging in and checking task manager) - this method does give back the CTRL-ALT-DEL but it seems the only way to clear out those sessions is still to reboot the box

By now you've probably either figured this out or come up with a different solution, but once you've remoted in, you should be able to bring up Task Manager, switch to the Users tab, and log off whoever you want.

Edit: I just tried what I preached, and it doesn't seem to work. I get an "access denied" error when trying to log off the inactive user through Task Manager, even though I'm admin. Strange. Curious if anyone else has found a solution to this.