Okay, that was easy, wasn’t it? All automated and simple. Now remember back to Chapter 1 when we logged on to the computer. Some computers don’t have a password to log on: some never show the box. Some computers can be set up to have multiple usernames and passwords (accounts) so that you can log into different desktops. How can we set all this up? From the Control Panel, of course! Open ‘Passwords’ or ‘User Accounts’ on your Control Panel. These two work very differently, and they are both presented below.

If your computer has the ‘Users’ item, then you have to check something before you can change the accounts. Open the Control Panel item called ‘Passwords’. In the window that pops up, click the ‘User Profiles’ tab (profile is another word for account). There are two radio buttons here. Click the first one if you want to have only one account on the computer, click the second one if you want to have multiple accounts. Then use the check boxes at the bottom to specify what things can be customised on each account. It is recommended to check all of these.
Once you have enabled using multiple accounts, it becomes easy to create a new account. To create a new accout, just type in a different name and password when you start the computer. Windows will automatically create the new account with that username and password to be used every time you log on with them.

If your computer has the ‘User Accounts’ item then you have a much easier way to change all of these options. To create a new desktop click ‘Create a new account’. The computer will ask you what you want to call the new account, this is the username. Click ‘Next’. The computer will then ask you if you want this to be a ‘Computer administrator’ or ‘Limited’ account. It is recommended to run most desktops as limited accounts, however there are some programs that do not function well this way. There are also many things you cannot do from a limited account (like create a new account, so if the instructions in this paragraph don’t work for you, then it is because you have a limited account). Click ‘Create Account’ and you have a new desktop of that type under that name!
To change an account in ‘User Accounts’, click on it in the list at the bottom of the window. The window will then give you the list of options of what you can change. You can change the account name by clicking on the first option. You can also change the password by clicking the second option or you can make your account password-less with the third option. To change the picture representing the account you use the fourth option. You change the account type from administrator to limited and vice-versa with the fifth option, and you assign a ‘.NET Passport’ to the account with the fifth option. All of these options save the last one should be self-explanatory. The final option will be discussed when we discuss the Internet. If you have multiple desktops on your computer and the account selected is not the account that is currently logged on, then there appears a sixth option ‘Delete the account’. This options starts a wizard to remove the user from the computer.
You can change the ‘Welcome screen’ (which is the log-on screen variation that fills the whole screen talked about in Chapter 1) to the normal log-on box. To do this select ‘Change the way users log on or off’ from the main ‘User Accounts’ screen. Then uncheck ‘Use the Welcome screen’ and click ‘Apply Options’.