Читать книгу Windows 11 All-in-One For Dummies - Ciprian Adrian Rusen - Страница 81

The first account on a new PC is always an administrator account. If you bought your PC with Windows 11 preinstalled, the account that you have — the one you probably set up shortly after you took the computer out of the box — is an administrator account. Or if you installed Windows 11 on a PC, the account you set up during installation is an administrator account.

When you create accounts, on the other hand, they always start out as standard accounts. That’s as it should be.

Administrator accounts and standard accounts aren’t set in concrete. In fact, Windows 11 helps you shift between the two as circumstances dictate:

 If you’re using a standard account and try to do something that requires an administrator account, Windows 11 prompts you to provide the administrator account’s name and password or PIN, as shown in Figure 4-1.FIGURE 4-1: User Account Control (UAC) asks for permission before performing administrative actions. If the person using the standard account selects an administrator account without a password, simply clicking or tapping the Yes button allows the program to run. That's one more reason why you need passwords on all your administrator accounts, isn’t it?

 Even if you’re using an administrator account, Windows 11 normally runs as though you had a standard account, in some cases adding an extra hurdle (usually in the form of an additional confirmation dialog) when you try to run a program that can make substantial changes to your PC. You must clear the same kind of hurdle if you try to access folders that aren’t explicitly shared (see Figure 4-2). That extra hurdle helps prevent destructive programs from sneaking into your computer and running with your administrator account, doing their damage without your knowledge or permission.

FIGURE 4-2: Windows 11 lays down a challenge before you dive into another user’s folder.

Some experts recommend that you use a standard account for daily activities and switch to an administrator account only when you need to install software or hardware or access files outside the usual shared areas. Most experts ignore their own advice: It’s the old do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do syndrome.

Because you can add new users only if you’re using an administrator account, I recommend that you save that one administrator account for a rainy day, and set up standard accounts for yourself and anyone else who uses the PC. Run with a standard account, and I bet you’ll seldom notice the difference.