CompTIA A_ Certification All-In-One Exam Guide, Seventh Edition - Michael Meyers [264]
Figure 16-17 User Accounts applet in Windows Vista Business
Figure 16-18 User Accounts applet in Windows Vista Home Premium
The Tasks options on the left are similar, with the addition of Parental Controls in the Home Premium edition, but the main options differ a lot. This chapter assumes a standalone machine, so we’ll look more closely at the options with Vista Home Premium.
Windows Vista Home Premium uses Vista’s version of the Welcome screen for logging in, so each user account has a picture associated with it. You can change the picture from the User Accounts applet. You can also change the name of the user account here and alter the account type, demoting an account from administrator to standard user, for example.
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NOTE You have to have one account as an administrator. If you try to demote the sole administrator account, you’ll find the option dimmed.
User Account Control
Windows XP made it too easy—and, in fact, almost necessary—to make your primary account on a computer an administrator account. Because limited users can’t do common tasks, such as running certain programs, installing applications, updating applications, updating Windows, and so on, most users simply created an administrator-level account and logged in. Because such accounts have full control over the computer, malware that slipped in with that account could do a lot more harm.
Microsoft addressed this problem with the User Account Control (UAC), a feature that enables standard users to do common tasks and provides a permissions dialog (Figure 16-19) when standard users and administrators do certain things that could potentially harm the computer (such as attempt to install a program). Vista user accounts now function much more like user accounts in Linux and Macintosh OS X, with programs asking for administrative permission before making changes to the computer.
Figure 16-19 Prompting for permission
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NOTE When Windows Vista debuted, most users and techs hated the User Account Control. The dialog box came up seemingly whenever you tried to do anything, prompting for a password if you were logged in as a Standard User or for confirmation if logged in as an administrator. Turning off the UAC prompt—though definitely not recommended by Microsoft—is readily accomplished in the User Accounts applet in the Control Panel. Click the link to Turn User Account Control on or off and deselect the checkbox next to Use User Account Control (UAC) to help protect your computer.
Parental Controls
With Parental Controls, you can monitor and limit the activities of any Standard User in Windows Vista, a feature that gives parents and managers an excellent level of control over the content their children and employees can access (Figure 16-20). Activity Reporting logs applications run or attempted to run, Web sites visited or attempted to visit, any kind of files downloaded, and more. You can block various Web sites by type or specific URL, or you can allow only certain Web sites, a far more powerful option.
Figure 16-20 Parental Controls
Parental Controls enable you to limit the time that standard users can spend logged in. You can specify acceptable and unacceptable times of day when standard users can log in. You can restrict access both to types of games and to specific applications. If you like playing rather gruesome games filled with monsters and blood that you don’t want your kids to play, for example, you can simply block any games with certain ESRB (Entertainment Software Rating Board) ratings, such as E for Everyone, T for Teen, or M for Mature or Mature 17+.
Managing Users in General
Aside from the specific aspects of managing