How To Check If Someone Logged in your Windows Computer

That moment when you were certain that you have shut down your Windows computer before you left the office. Then the next day, you can see your monitor’s on and your screensaver’s running.

Shocking and confusing isn’t it? It looks like that someone did log into your Windows computer without you knowing it.

No need to panic.

There are various methods or ways where you can proactively protect your Windows computer system from such events. And I will document them all for you one of these days.

But for now, here’s a quick way on how you can immediately check and verify if someone did log into your Windows computer and when did that happen.

By the way, if you are using Windows 7 Professional operating system and up on your computer, then at one point in time, you will need Administrative access.

Especially on the steps that we are about to show you. You will need to access the stamped events on your Windows 7 Event Viewer.

And the steps below can also be applied to newer Windows versions, like Windows 10.

Check Unauthorized Log-In Using Event Viewer

1. Boot up your Windows computer system. We will be using Windows 7 for this example.
2. Locate and open your Event Viewer. For Windows 7, it’s much easier to find an app when you hit that Start button. You just need to type the name of the application.
3. On the left panel of your Event viewer, click Windows Logs – System.
4. Then once the log events load, sort it by Date and Time. In this way, you can check when did the unauthorized log-in happen.
5. After that, you can scroll down and look for Winlogon under the Source column.
6. Double-click the last event of Winlogon so that you can get further information.
7. Once the pop-up window comes out, you can take note of the time when somebody logged into your Windows computer.

Here’s the video to illustrate the steps above.

How To Prevent Unauthorized Logins On Windows?

You should not ignore this incident now that you have seen it in your Windows computer’s Event Viewer.

Somebody did accessed your computer. You need to take action or else this incident might happen again. You can follow these simple steps.

• Update your Windows antivirus software – ALWAYS!
• Make sure you scan your Windows computer system regularly to make sure that you don’t have any Trojan viruses or virus-infected files.
• Change your password regularly. Read more about the list of worst passwords last year and DON’T do the same mistake.
• Make your password long and complicated. The password should be 8 alphanumeric characters. A combination of lowercase and uppercase with numbers and special characters. The more complicated and sophisticated your password is, the harder it is to break.
• Don’t re-use your old password – NEVER!
• Report to your IT or System Administrator for any unauthorized logins on your computer.
• Always have a backup. You can never tell whether someone plans to delete your files.

Never think that hackers are dumb. These guys will not stop if they want to get something from your Windows computer. So make sure you are always protected. And you should backup your files so that you can prevent losing data or files.

Can you share some more tips on how to protect our Windows computer system to avoid invalid logins?