Configure Vista user accounts easily with our video tutorial

It is a good idea to set up Vista user accounts for everyone who shares your computer. We recommend using limited accounts wherever possible. Children, who are ever curious, are particularly likely to poke around in places they shouldn't and change settings that might affect your operating system. Using limited accounts for your children also makes it harder for them to disable any content filtering/net nanny software you might choose to install. Windows User Account Control makes it easy to temporarily grant administrator rights to perform simple tasks. Tasks such as installing a new program, or running an older legacy application can now be done on a limited account. Because of this, working with limited accounts in Vista is much easier than in previous versions of Windows.

Windows XP users If you surfed onto this page and you are looking for information on XP user accounts, please click here. Please wait a few moments while the video loads. When loading is complete, press the play button on the video control panel below the video to start playback.

Additional Notes

User Account Control (UAC) is just there to annoy people isn't it? When Windows Vista was launched, many users were frustrated by the frequent "Windows needs your permission to continue" pop-up boxes that seemed to appear every few minutes. When you are first configuring your computer, these frequent UAC prompts can become daunting, but when you are configuring Vista user accounts for the rest of your family, UAC is your best friend! On Windows XP, if you wanted to install a program for use on a limited user account, you would have to first switch to your administrators account, install the program (making sure to make it available to all users on the computer) then switch back to your limited account to test the program. Thanks to UAC, all that you need to do is enter your administrators password while you install the new software on any account you choose. If you need a refresher on UAC, check out our User Account Control tutorial.

We do not recommend relying on password protected accounts to protect your privacy or your sensitive documents. If you need to store and work on sensitive documents, please check out our PC privacy overview and our PC privacy tutorials.

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