Introduction to User Accounts
Everyone who uses your computer can have their own user account. This allows each person to have his or her own settings, and it allows you to set up Parental Controls to limit the types of games and programs your children are able to use.
Hear you will learn how to create new user accounts, change account settings, and set up Parental Controls for your children's accounts.
Setting up multiple user accounts
Why should you have multiple user accounts?
- If you wanted to, you could have a single account on your computer that everyone could use. But having multiple accounts has some advantages.
- If each user has his or her own account, then each person will have his or her own desktop for organizing files and folders.
- Each person also will be able to choose a specific desktop background, along with other personalization features.
- In addition, parents will be able to set Parental Controls for each child's account.
Standard vs. administrator accounts
Standard Account
- Standard accounts are the basic accounts you use for normal, everyday tasks.
- As a Standard user, you can do just about anything you would need to do, such as running software or personalizing your desktop.
- Also, Parental Controls can be placed on Standard accounts.
Administrator Account
- Administrator accounts are special accounts that are used for making certain changes to system settings or managing other people's accounts.
- They have full access to every setting on the computer. Every computer will have at least one Administrator account.
As you can see, Administrator accounts are more powerful. But for the same reason, Standard accounts are safer, so they are generally better for everyday use.
In fact, you can make Administrator-level changes while logged into a Standard account; you will just need to provide an Administrator password when making the changes.
To go to your user accounts:
- Go to the Control Panel from the Start Menu.
- Click Add or remove user accounts.
- The Manage Accounts pane will appear. You will see all of the user accounts here, and you can add more accounts or manage existing ones.
To create a new account:
- From the Manage Accounts pane, click Create a new account.
- Type an account name.
- Select Standard user or Administrator.
- Click Create Account.
Changing an account's settings
- Once you've created a new account, you may want to add a password or make other changes to the account's settings.
To create a password:
- From the Manage Accounts pane, click the account name or picture.
- Click Create a password.
- Type a password in the New password field, and retype it in the Confirm new password field.
- If you want, you can type a password hint to help you remember your password.
- Click Create password.
- To go back to the Manage Accounts pane, click Manage another account.
To change your account picture:
- You can also change the picture for any account. This picture appears next to the account name and helps you easily identify the account.
- From the Manage Accounts pane, click the account name or picture.
- Click Change the picture.
- Select a picture, or click Browse for more pictures to select one of your own.
- Click Change Picture.
Using Parental Controls
- Windows 7 offers various Parental Controls to help you control the types of content your children can access.
- You can place parental controls on any Standard account, and each account can have different settings.
- If you have more than one child, each child can have access to different types of content, and you can always change the Parental Controls settings as your children get older.
Before you set up Parental Controls
- You'll need to create an account for your child, if you haven't already. It should be a Standard account; you cannot apply Parental Controls to an Administrator account.
- When you're setting up Parental Controls, it doesn't matter which account you're logged in to, but if you're logged in to a Standard account you'll need to provide an Administrator password before making any changes.
- Make sure your children do not know your Administrator password, as it would allow them to change or disable Parental Controls for any user account.
To set up Parental Controls
- Go to the Control Panel from the Start Menu.
- Click Set up parental controls for any user.
- Click on any Standard Account.
- Click On to turn Parental Controls on.
- Now you can click Time limits, Games, or Allow and block specific programs to set the Parental Controls.
