[W7] User management on Family PC - Admin and user groups

[thisbot]

Hey guys,

After spending most of the day trying to get my head around user management and getting nowhere, I'm asking for help.

I've built a PC, and freshly installed windows 7 on a computer for my girlfriends family. I want one normal-user password protected account at the welcome screen, but I want them to be able to use administrator rights when necessary.

The default profile created during instillation (lets call it User1) has administrator powers. User2 has only user rights, and of course there is disabled/hidden Administrator account with elevated admin rights.

When I tried to configure this last time by hiding User1 and Admin, I ended locking myself out of all admin access and therefore couldn't change passwords, re enable or login to UAC. I had to system restore to get back to working configuration.

Can anyone tell me how to create a system that shows only one login for a normal user, but can then access administrator options via UAC?

If I disable User1 in additon to having Admin disabled, I'm sure I will just get locked out of admin access again?

If I delete User1, and keep admin disabled, will User2 be able to use admin privileges - or will it lead to again?

I'm probably missing something very simple, but i just can't see a way to do this with having only one login visible on the welcome screen. (without the one login being User1 with admin rights)

Thankyou!

 

[MilesAhead]

In Vista and Windows Seven the default account in the Administrator group that is created, is roughly equivalent to the Operators Group that was extant in NT Server 4. You could do things like install programs, register COM dlls etc.. but you could not delete system files.

I think it's a pretty good compromise.
But then again I turn UAC off altogether. So maybe I can't be trusted.

 

[gregrocker]

There's no point in not having each user be an Admin if you want them to have the powers, otherwise you'd have the Admin account passworded and keep it secret to prevent lesser users from making changes.

Win7 assumes the account upon installation is the owner so it has full rights. If you add another decide if they should have the right to make changes, or not.

 

[thisbot]

I ended up just changing UAC settings so even the admin is prompted for a password when making changes, because I couldn't find any other way to do it - and it is essentially what I wanted.

Thanks for the replies