Every user of a computer has their own account. Whether you use the computer as an Administrator or anonymous Guest, the data that you save only shows up for the specific account that you used during the time of access. An account involves a username and password, which are used to unlock and start using the computer. However, for computers with higher security standards, our job as IT Consultants occasionally involves manually creating these user accounts ourselves so that we can control the username and password. Alternatively, we also manually create local accounts as a temporary sign-in option until the intended owner of the computer has a chance to change the password.

There are two types of local accounts that we can create: an administrator account and a local user (non-admin) account. (tldr; version at the bottom)

You’ll need to be logged in as an administrator to make these changes. Open Control Panel and navigate to:

• Control Panel → “Users” → “Advanced” → right-click “Users” folder

To create a local user (non-admin) account:
Select “Add User” and set their username and password. If the account is intended to be a temporary account, it’s common to set the username to something like “temp” and the password to something similar. If you’re creating a long-term use account, the username will most likely correspond with the end-user’s name or ID. After specifying the account details, you’ll find configuration items at the bottom that allow you to control whether or not they should be allowed to change their password, or even be forced to change the password after the first login.

To create an admin account:
First, create a normal local user account by selecting “Add User” and going through the same configuration as above. After that is completed, move the account into the admin group in the Users list to allocate administrator privileges for that account.

Security precautions
As with all administrator accounts, it is important as a consultant to ensure that the end-user of an administrative account is aware of the risks as well as precautions they should take in order to avoid their privileges being compromised. For administrator accounts, we always inquire beforehand whether or not the computer will be storing PL2 data (sensitive information). The decision to grant admin access is one that depends on the type of data that will potentially be accessed using this account. After the admin account is created, we instruct the user to use it sparingly, and to use their regular local user account as much as possible. These precautions are put in place due to the administrator accounts’ capability to potentially compromise the campus domain.

— tldr; —

• Control Panel → “Users” → “Advanced” → right-click “Users” folder
• To add a local user (non-admin):
  • Set username & password
  • Configure the settings (checkboxes) based on whether or not they should be able to change their passwords or receive a password-change prompt at startup
• To add an admin account:
  • Create a local user account first
  • Move the account into the admin group to specifically give them admin privileges