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If you’re logged on in Windows 2000 as the administrator or a member of the local Administrators group, open the Users and Passwords applet from Control Panel and click the Add button. This opens the Add New User Wizard (Figure 16-5). Enter the user name that the user will use to log on. Enter the user’s first and last names in the Full name field, and if you wish, enter some text that describes this person in the Description field. If this is at work, enter a job description in this field. The Full name and Description fields are optional.

Figure 16-5 Adding a new user

After entering the user information, click the Next button to continue. This opens a password dialog box where you can enter and confirm the initial password for this new user (Figure 16-6). Click the Next button to continue.

Figure 16-6 Create user password

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CAUTION Blank passwords or those that are easily visible on a sticky note provide no security. Always insist on non-blank passwords, and do not let anyone leave a password sitting out in the open. See the section on passwords later in the chapter.

Now you get to decide what groups the new user should belong to. Select one of the two suggested options—standard user or restricted user—or select the Other option button and choose a group from the drop-down list. Select Standard User, which on a Windows 2000 Professional desktop makes this person a member of the local Power Users group as well as the Local Users group. Click the Finish button to close the dialog box. You should see your new user listed in the Users and Passwords dialog box. While you’re there, note how easy it is for an administrator to change a user’s password. Simply select a user from the list and then click on the Set Password button. Enter and confirm the new password in the Set Password dialog box. Figure 16-7 shows the Set Password dialog box with the Users and Passwords dialog box in the background.

Now let’s say you want to change a password. Select the new user in the Users for this computer list on the Users page. Then click the Set Password button on the Users page. Enter and confirm the new password and then click the OK button to apply the changes.

Figure 16-7 Set Password dialog box

Managing Users in Windows XP

Although Windows XP has essentially the same type of accounts database as Windows 2000, the User Accounts applet in the Control Panel replaces the Users and Passwords applet and further simplifies user management tasks.

Windows XP has two very different ways to deal with user accounts and how you log on to a system: the blank user name and password text boxes, reminiscent of Windows 2000, and the Windows XP Welcome screen (Figure 16-8). If your Windows XP computer is a member of a Windows domain, your system automatically uses the Windows Classic style, including the requirement to press CTRL-ALT-DEL to get to the user name and password text boxes, just as in Windows 2000. If your Windows XP computer is not a member of a domain, you may use either method, although the Welcome screen is the default. Windows XP Home and Windows XP Media Center cannot join a domain, so these versions of Windows only use the Welcome screen. Windows Tablet PC Edition functions just as Windows XP Professional.

Assuming that your Windows XP system is not a member of a domain, I’ll concentrate on the XP Welcome screen and some of the options you’ll see in the User Accounts Control Panel applet.

The User Accounts applet is very different from the old Users and Passwords applet in Windows 2000. User Accounts hides the complete list of users, using a simplistic reference to account types that is actually a reference to its group membership. An account that is a member of the local administrators group is said to be a computer administrator; an account that only belongs to the Local Users group is said to be a limited user account. Which users the applet displays depends on which type of user is currently logged on (see Figure 16-9). When an administrator