As you have seen by now, Windows Vista is a multiuser operating system. To help you keep each user’s files and settings separate, you should create a separate user account for each person who regularly uses the computer. This article shows you manage users and accounts. First, it explains what user accounts are and what they’re for. Then it details the three different types of user account that Windows Vista supports, together with their capabilities and limitations. After that, it tells you how to create, delete, and modify user accounts; how to require passwords for them; and how to make Windows automatically log on a particular account at startup. You’ll also learn how to use Windows Vista’s new Parental Control features to limit what users can do. If you’re the only person who ever uses your computer, you hardly need to worry about user accounts. But if you share your computer with anybody else, you should use user accounts to the fullest extent, because they offer great benefits and require minimal setup and administration. Read on.

What Are User Accounts and What Are They For?

A user account is a group of settings that lets you tailor the Windows environment to each regular user. By using user accounts, you can let each user set different preferences on the computer, so that each user can maintain a custom Desktop that provides the look they like and the shortcuts and information they need. Each user can also keep separate favorites and histories in Internet Explorer. Article 2 discusses Internet Explorer’s History and Favorites features. Each user can protect their user account with a password if they choose, and they can choose to share folders with other users via the network. By using accounts effectively and setting passwords, you can control access to your computer, and you can allow different privileges to different users. For example, you could prevent the less responsible members of the household from accessing critical files by storing them in secure folders. User accounts are particularly useful when your computer is networked including always-on connections to the Internet. Each user account is identified by a username that Windows uses to manage it. The account has a full-name field that typically contains the full name of the user which appears on the Welcome screen and at the top of the Start menu and a comment field that can be used for storing a comment about the user. Each user account has an account type that defines its permissions and a set of folders in which the user’s details and preferences are stored.