The best way to handle user
accounts is for one person to play the role of administrator, even if
that person isn’t a professional. In a home environment, it would most
likely be a parent who needs to define parental controls. It’s best to
log in to a user account that already has administrative privileges to
get started. If you have only one user account, or are taken straight
to the desktop at startup, then that account probably has
administrative privileges.
As with most configuration tasks, you create and
manage user accounts through the Control Panel. There are several pages
you can use, and several ways to get to them. As always, there is no
right way or wrong way. No good way or bad way. You just use whatever
is easiest and most convenient for you at the moment. Here are a couple
of ways to navigate to options for managing the user account you’re
logged in to at the moment:
- Display the Charms Bar, click Search, click Settings, type user in the search box, and click Change User Account Control Settings.
- Display the Charms Bar, click Search, click Settings, type user in the search box, and click Make Changes To Accounts.
A Control Panel applet appears that lets
you make changes to the account into which you’re currently logged, as
in the example shown in Figure 1. Options marked with shield icons require administrative privileges.
To create a new user account, click Manage
Another Account. If you’re in a standard account on a computer that
already has a password-protected administrative account, you’ll have to
enter the password for the Administrator account. Or, if the
administrative account doesn’t have a password, press Enter to leave
the password box empty. You end up in the Manage Accounts page. There,
you see an icon for every user account on your system. You can also see
each account’s type. Figure 2
shows an example with three administrative accounts and one standard
account (the Guest account icon also appears, but it is disabled on
this computer).
