Windows XP Professional: The Missing Manual

Local Accounts on a Workstation

This section is dedicated to computers in a workgroup network—or no network at all. If your computer is a member of a domain, skip to Local Accounts on a Domain Computer, later in this chapter.

To see what accounts are already on your PC, choose Start→Control Panel, and then open the User Accounts icon. You’ll see a list of existing accounts (Figure 17-1).

Figure 17-1. This screen lists everyone for whom you’ve created an account. From here, you can create new accounts or change people’s passwords. (Hint: To change account settings, just click the person’s name on the bottom half of the screen. Clicking the “Change an account” link at top requires an extra, redundant click.)

If you see more than one account here—not just yours—then one of these situations probably applies:

• You created them when you installed Windows XP Pro, as described in Appendix A.

  Tip

  All of the accounts you create when you first install Windows XP become Administrator accounts, as described in the following section.

• You bought a new computer with Windows XP preinstalled, and created several accounts when asked to do so the first time you turned on the machine.

• You upgraded the machine from an earlier version of Windows. Windows XP gracefully imports all of your existing accounts.

Note

Upgrader beware: If you’ve upgraded from Windows 98 or Me, Windows XP (a) treats all of these imported ...