Windows XP: Consequences of setting a password for an account

Posted by sleske on Super User See other posts from Super User or by sleske
Published on 2010-01-02T14:52:11Z Indexed on 2010/03/15 4:20 UTC
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Filed under:

Windows

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user-accounts

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password

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security

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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