Accounts and users in xp pro

[PoSer]

I was looking around and noticed many thread asking about hidden accounts in xp and I thought I would share how to see just what accounts you have on your computer and how to disable the ones you don’t want left open.

Getting to the nuts and bolts
Xp has a very nice GUI management console that provides an admin with an easy to access console that will let you do many things such as put your logs and security policy within easy reach, you get there by opening the run line and typing “mmc” (no quotes)
This will bring up an empty console. You then go to file and click on add/remove snap-in
You next will click on the add button. This will bring up a list of snap-ins that are available for you to add. Since we will be talking about the user/group policy that would be the one that you should select. After you have selected the snap-in you will have a wizard open up that will ask you if you want it to control the local machine or a computer on the network. Since I am aiming this tut at newbies I will stick with the local machine after you finish with the wizard click the close button.

You will now have a console tree with the snap-ins you have selected. So click on on users this will bring up a list of all of the accounts on the machine. You can then double click on any of the accounts this will open another window that will allow you to do any of the following

1. Disable the account (I recommend doing this to all of the remote access accounts).
2. Force a password change.
3. Disable the users ability to change a password.

If you click on the member of tab you can view the groups that the user is a member of.
If you want to change what groups the member is part of then you just go back to the console tree and click groups. This will bring up a list of all of the groups in xp pro.
If you want to add a user to one of the listed groups you would double click the group and in the window that comes up click add you would then type the profiles name and click the check name button. Once the profiles name resolves you click ok to close the window and ok again to close the next window and you will have then added the selected profile to the group you have selected.

Hope somebody finds this useful.
I welcome any comments on how this tut could be made better.

[jehnx]

Excellent tute mate. Very informative and concise. One thing to note: You must be using Windows XP Professional for this to work, not Home. In Home, you need to go to the Accounts Tools in the Control Panel.

[gizmofreak]

I was ondering about the 2 default accounts for remote access and how to disable them.
Thanks for the info

[nightcat]

You could as well use this line

[gloworange]control userpasswords2[/gloworange]

It will give the list of all the accounts on your system, should work for both Home and Pro