How do I Create a Local User Account?
Hi everyone. Leo Notenboom here for askleo.com.
I actually ran into this situation not long ago and decided that it would be very
instructive to show you how to create local user account on Windows.
Microsoft kind of sort of goes out
of their way to make it difficult, or at least make it not obvious how to do this.
If you're logging in with your Microsoft account, that's fine.
This isn't necessarily a replacement for that.
The best use case scenario for most folks
is to have a backup way of logging into their machine if for some reason
their Microsoft account becomes unable to do so.
What we're going to do is create a local account on the machine and then change
that to be administrator capable so that if you ever need it, you can log in.
Let's switch over now to Windows Ten.
So what I'm going to do is just search for user accounts
and there's a bunch of different settings for different options you can do.
What we're looking for here is add, edit, or remove other users.
Depending on what you find in your search results, it can be a little different.
But this is the interface we want to start with.
These are other users.
These are unrelated to your family.
This is unrelated to your Microsoft account.
We're going to add someone else to this PC.
Now, the issue here is that it wants a Microsoft account.
It really does.
But we don't have this person sign in information because there is no account.
There is no sign in information.
And once again,
it really wants to push a Microsoft account, which we're not going to do.
The trick here is this add a user without a Microsoft account.
That's what causes a local account to be created.
Now I'm going to give this local account my usual local account name.
I'm going to give it a password that I use a fair amount for this kind of stuff.
And this does require that we set up some security questions.
I'm going to skip over that here
in the video because there's no need for you to see my questions and answers.
But this is a requirement.
There is no way to bypass this in the real world.
So I do suggest you set this kind of stuff up.
Okay.
After hitting okay, after creating those security questions,
we now have a local account that I could, if I wanted to, sign into the machine with.
I'm now going to click on it and change the account type.
I'm going to change it from standard user to administrator.
We'll hit. Okay.
And now we have this other account on our
system with login credentials that don't rely on any Microsoft account.
The way to test that, of course, is to sign out.
And then you'll see that we have down here
a new account listed on the login screen that we can select instead I'm going
to click on that type in that account's password.
And since this is the first time logging
in with that account, we end up with the old out of box experience or O-B-E.
As they sometimes call it.
Essentially what's happening right now is
it's setting up the documents and videos and pictures and standard folders
and a bunch of information in the registry for this specific account.
Now that it's been logged into, there's a bunch of settings we can select.
Again, these as always are up to you.
I'm just going to go ahead and accept the defaults here and there.
We are. We've got a clean,
fresh user on my Windows machine, on my Windows Ten machine.
What I am going to do also is since I like
a clean desktop is to remove the shortcuts.
We'll just make those go away in the recycle bin because of course
the applications are still here in the Start menu.
The Start menu is a default Start menu again, set up for a brand new account.
The taskbar has the defaults set on it and there you go.
You've got a different non-microsoft login account for this machine.
I'm now going to go ahead and go back to my primary use account right click.
I'll go ahead and go back to the account
that I had been using which uses a pin to sign in and we're back now.
I do want to caution you that it may seem like a useful thing to actually use this
other account for certain things do so if you are comfortable doing so,
do realize, however, that it can suddenly get very confusing
when you have documents or if you install software that suddenly is only available
or doesn't seem to be available while you're logged in.
It's very common for people to do things
in one account that they don't realize won't show up in the other.
So my suggestion is my recommendation is
that you pick one account to do most of your work under.
In this case, I'm choosing to do that with my Microsoft account.
That other account that I've created is a backup account.
It will do a couple of other things
that we'll talk about in future videos, but it is just a backup account
and another way for me to sign into my machine should I ever not want
to or be unable to sign in using the Microsoft account.
Hope that's helpful for updates.
For comments for related links and more, visit Askleo/com/143029.
I'm Leo Notenboom and this is AskLeo.com. Thanks for watching.