SID’s are crucial to systems because every user accounts are associated to an unchangeable alphanumeric character string. Any changes to the username will not affect the users access to the system resources and in case if you delete a username, and later someone tries to create an account with your old username, it’s impossible to regain the access to the resources as the SIDs are always unique to every username and in this case it isn’t the same. Now, let us see how to Find Security Identifier (SID) of any User in Windows 10.
Find Security Identifier (SID) of any User in Windows 10
1] Using WMIC
Finding a user’s SID or Security Identifier is really easy. We have to use the Windows Management Instrumentation Command Line (WMIC) to do this. So first of all, start by, opening the Command Prompt. You can do this by searching for Command Prompt in the Cortana Search Box. Or if you are using Windows 8 or newer, hit the WINKEY + X button combination to launch a context menu on the Start Button and click on Command Prompt (Admin). Now, type in the following command, And then hit the Enter key. Now you will get results like in the screen snippet below. You will get the User Account with the SID of the same.
Filtering out SID for your desired user
Readers who are used to be using SQL queries might relate to this. But this command helps the user to get SID of a particular user and ignore all the hassle. This is most useful when a large system (like a server) is logged in and used simultaneously by multiple users, this command will save a lot of your time. But will only work if you know the username of the user.
Now, the command you are gonna use is-
Now, you have to replace USER with the actual username of the user inside the quotes in the command above.
For example, it should be like-
In case, you get an error while using the command above, try changing the path to C:\Windows|System32|wbem instead of C:\Windows\System32
The result of the above command would look something like this,
2] Using Whoami
Find SID of Current User using Command Prompt or PowerShell
Open a PowerShell/CMD window and type the following command:
Press Enter. Another way to find SID of a Current user is using the command wmic useraccount as below Open a PowerShell/CMD window and type the following command:
Press Enter.
Find SID of All Users using Command Prompt or PowerShell
Open a Command Prompt/PowerShell window and type the following command:
Press Enter.
Find SID of a Specific User using CommandPrompt or PowerShell
Open a Command Prompt/PowerShell and type the following command: Give the actual name of the user in place of username in the above command. Press Enter.
Find Username of SID using Command Prompt or PowerShell
Open a Command Prompt/PowerShell and type the following command
Give the actual SID value in place of
3] Use PowerShell
Another way to find SID of all user is using the command Get-WmiObject in the PowerShell. Open PowerShell and type the following command:
Press Enter.
4] Using the Registry Editor
Here, start by opening the Registry Editor. You can do it by searching for it in the Cortana Search box or just hit WINKEY + R combination to launch start and type in regedit and then hit Enter. Once you have opened the Registry Editor, navigate to the following path, Now, inside the ProfileImagePath values for each SID under the folder of ProfileList, you can find the desired SIDs and other details like Usernames. The page would look similar to this screen snippet below.
It is worth noting that you can find the SIDs for the users who are already logged in to the computer. Either they should be accessing their account remotely or their account should be logged in and then switched to another user on whose account this activity is being done. This is the only drawback of this method but the Method 1 of using WMIC, it is not an issue at all.
Identifying SIDs
A SID in the format of S-1-0-0 is called as a Null SID. It is assigned to a SID when its value is unknown or it is assigned to a group without any members. Also, a SID in the format of S-1-1-0 is a World SID. It is assigned to a group of every user. Finally, a SID in the format of S-1-2-0 is called as a Local SID. It is assigned to a user who is supposed to be logged in from a local terminal. You can learn more about these System Identifiers here on Microsoft Developer Network. With inputs from Pavithra Bhat
