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Need help understanding Win7 accounts hierarchy
~~Little Old Lady Needs Help Crossing The Windows Street~~
This is probably on the board somewhere but I can't seem to find it.
I'm used to running my pcs under the single user (before Windows was able to do multiple user accounts) or Owner accounts. I'm the only one who ever uses my pcs. What I'm having a little trouble with is understanding Win7 and accounts. I know there's a hidden adminstrator account and until I understand why I'm not messing with that one. I know how to take ownership of folders and files so I can get into nearly everything on the pc, but I have those still set at the defaults until I understand how to give myself total permission everywhere without opening the door for everyone else (net security, not other users) to be able to get into everything too. I have what's apparently the standard Administrator/User account that gets set up when you first boot up a new laptop. When I was checking into taking ownership of files and folders, I saw 2 adminstrator accounts with my pc name (1: Administrator/PC Name, 2: Administrators/Same PC Name) and 1 account with my user name. Plus the System account. The only account I know of setting up was the first boot up "Give a user name, Give a PC name" thing.
I've been reading the suggestion about creating a user account just to be on the net with and using the adminstrator account for installing updates, etc (which leads me to wonder if I can partition a small part of the hard drive to make a specific user account just for that purpose alone). The Win7 Adminstrator/User account isn't acting like what I'm used to because I've tried a few things and it asked me if I want to take permanent ownership of certain folders, or did I want to run certain things as an administrator, etc. To me it's acting more like a User account than an administrator account.
I haven't taken the laptop online yet because I want to know if I take a user account online and get all the updates (my first netstop) and then an anti-virus in place, will that cover all accounts or do I need to use the administrator account for that...
Sorry if this is a bit confusing but I'm confused. I'm trying to figure out how to set up basic security on the thing before I go running around in the wild with it. I don't know if I should make the User account first or do updates/anti-virus first.....
Basically all I've done with the laptop is make the recovery discs, putz with a few safe settings, made a restore point. I've ventured into the folder/file ownership thing but then took it back to the restore point and checked to see everything was back to what it was before I did those things.
My last 2 pcs had Windows XP, before that my pc had Windows 95, my 1st experience was DOS (1. something or other) and BASIC. I'm used to digging all over my pcs: registry, settings, etc and inside them: replacing drives, cables, adding slave drives and externals, minimal pc repair type stuff but not power supplies, motherboards, etc. I'm very comfortable with line commands (actually more comfortable with those than gui).
Sorry if this is a bit long but one of the threads (the Welcome thread I think but don't hold me to that) said to mention your pc experience. (Just for anyone curious, the 1st computer I owned was a TRS-80.)
Thanks in advance for any help offered here.