Windows XP: Consequences of setting a password for an account
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by sleske
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Published on 2010-01-02T14:52:11Z
Indexed on
2010/03/15
4:20 UTC
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I do not quite understand how Windows (specifically Windows XP) handles accounts with/without passwords.
As far as I can see, on a fresh Windows XP install I have one default account which
- has admin rights
- does not have a password
- will auto-login (without password prompt) when the computer boots
What happens if I set a password for this account? Will it still auto-login? Or will it always prompt for the PW?
And generally, what consequences does it have if I set a password? I noted that Scheduled Tasks apparently cannot run under an account w/o password (creating a scheduled task will prompt for the account PW). Is there anything that will not work with a password set? Why is it even possible to have accounts without a password?
I have some Unix/Linux background, but the concepts appear a little different under Windows.
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