Create Windows user accounts for all the family

jjones | Guides | 14/12/2009 14:51pm
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If you only have one PC and like to share it with other people, such as your family or friends at school, you should create an account for each person, otherwise you might put your PC at risk. By letting people use your normal account, they can make potentially damaging changes to your PC, such as installing new software or altering security settings.

By setting up their own personalised account, you can prevent them from doing this, or from accessing your files or history. Another benefit is that with a personalised account, you can change the look of your PC to suit your own style, without affecting other accounts – great if you want to make your account look and sound different from the rest.

Step-by-step: Making new Windows 7 accounts

1 Find user accounts The first thing you need to do is find out where to create new user accounts. Click on Start > Control Panel > User Accounts and Family Safety and click on User Accounts. In here you’ll find the different options that you need for making and amending user accounts.

2 Protect yours Before you begin creating accounts for other people, you need to make sure that nobody can access your own account. You can do this by adding a simple password to your user account. Click on Change your password, enter a new password and then click on Change Password.

3 Create an account Now that your account is protected against prying eyes, you can start creating individual accounts for every person who uses your PC, so click on Manage another account. In here you’ll see a window listing the different accounts. Now click on Create new account and type the person’s name in.

4 Give them rights If you don’t want the person who is going to use that particular account to be able to make any unwanted changes to your files or settings, you should just give them a standard account. Simply click on the check box next to Standard user and then click on Create Account.

5 More passwords please Just as you did with your own account, you can add a password to each of your standard user accounts. However, if somebody with a standard account wants to change their particular password themselves, they can do this by once again clicking Change your password in the User Accounts area.

6 Get the look You can give each account its own unique look, which not only gives each person their own sense of identity, but it also makes their account easier to pick out at the log-in screen during startup. To personalise, click on Change the picture, select a new image and then click Change Picture.

7 A temporary measure If you a think that a standard account is a little too generous, you can create a temporary account for someone who only wants to use your PC for a short while. You can do this by selecting Guest Account from the list of user accounts and clicking Turn On to activate it.

8 A better PC There you have it. After completing those steps, you have a PC that is safer and more enjoyable to use. One of the nicest advantages is that a person with their own account can make simple changes, such as changing the desktop background, without others having to stare at the same wallpaper.

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