Windows® 7 Secrets®

Chapter 8. Users, Accounts, and UAC

In This Chapter

• Understanding the types of user accounts you can create in Windows 7

• Using User Account Control to protect your system

• Configuring User Account Control

• Turning off User Account Control

• Applying and configuring Parental Controls for your children

• How Parental Controls work and how you can override their settings

• Using Windows Live Family Safety

By now most Windows users are probably familiar with the notion of user accounts and how all users on a PC can have their own individual settings, documents, and other features. In Windows Vista, Microsoft simplified the user account types down to just two, and locked them down to make the system more secure. Windows 7 takes this approach a step further and makes it easier to configure how user accounts behave and are protected. And thanks to features such as User Account Control, Parental Controls, and Windows Live Family Safety, Windows 7 is not only more secure than previous Windows versions, but also easier to configure from a user account perspective. This chapter describes these features and explains how they can be put to the best possible use.

Note

Windows 7 user accounts include a variety of obvious functionality that is not covered here explicitly because this book focuses on secrets, those features that are brand-new to Windows 7 and/or are so well hidden you'd never normally know about them. So, yes, you can add cute pictures to your user account; add, change, and remove passwords; and ...