Page 881 - Windows 10 May 2019 Update The Missing Manual: The Book That Should Have Been in the Box

Chapter 18. Accounts (and

Signing In)

For years, teachers, parents, tech directors, and computer lab instructors
struggled to answer two difficult questions: How do you rig one PC so
several different people can use it throughout the day without interfering

with one another’s files and settings? And how do you protect a PC from
getting fouled up by mischievous (or bumbling) students and employees?

Today’s answer: Use a multiple-user operating system like Windows.

Anyone who uses the computer must sign in—supply a name and password
—when the computer turns on.

Since the day you installed Windows 10 or fired up a new Windows 10

machine, you’ve probably made a number of changes to your setup—
fiddled with your Start menu, changed the desktop wallpaper, added some

favorites to your web browser, downloaded files onto your desktop, and so
on—without realizing that you were actually making these changes only to
your account.

Ditto with your web history and cookies, Control Panel settings, email
stash, and so on. It’s all part of your account.

If you create an account for a second person, then when she turns on the
computer and signs in, she’ll find the desktop looking the way it was

factory-installed by Microsoft: basic Start menu, standard desktop picture,
default web browser home page, and so on. She can make the same kinds of
changes to the device that you’ve made, but nothing she does will affect

your environment the next time you sign on.

In other words, the multiple-accounts feature has two benefits: first, the
convenience of hiding everyone else’s junk and, second, security that

protects both the PC’s system software and everyone’s work.