Administrator appears on Welcome Screen

[Guest]

I have five computers running XP Pro. On two of these the administrator
acount appears on the welcome screen, not on the other three. After some
reading in this forum I decided that it was because I did not have another
account on those computers, with administrator rights. So now I have two
administrators on each machine.......

So, I am told I should not operate my computers using the administrator
account. That makes sense. However, does that mean THE administrator account
or all of the administrator accounts (would seem logical that it is all).

Well the new administrator account shows up on the welcome screen.....

 

[Ron Sommer]

Do not use THE administrator account.
In Help, look for "To turn the Welcome screen on or off".

 

[Steve N.]

I have five computers running XP Pro. On two of these the administrator
acount appears on the welcome screen, not on the other three. After some
reading in this forum I decided that it was because I did not have another
account on those computers, with administrator rights.
Yep.

So now I have two
administrators on each machine.......

So, I am told I should not operate my computers using the administrator
account. That makes sense. However, does that mean THE administrator account
or all of the administrator accounts (would seem logical that it is all).

It means THE admin account.

Well the new administrator account shows up on the welcome screen.....

Good.

Steve

 

[Steve N.]

Do not use THE administrator account.
Right.

In Help, look for "To turn the Welcome screen on or off".

The OP did not ask about that.

Steve

 

[Bruce Chambers]

I have five computers running XP Pro. On two of these the administrator
acount appears on the welcome screen, not on the other three. After some
reading in this forum I decided that it was because I did not have another
account on those computers, with administrator rights. So now I have two
administrators on each machine.......

So, I am told I should not operate my computers using the administrator
account. That makes sense. However, does that mean THE administrator account
or all of the administrator accounts (would seem logical that it is all).

The caution primarily refers to the built-in Administrator account.
The built-in Administrator account really isn't intended to be used for
day-to-day normal use. The standard security practice is to rename the
account, set a strong password on it, and use it only to create another
account for regular use, reserving the Administrator account as a "back
door" in case something corrupts your regular account(s).

As for other accounts with administrative privileges, routinely using a
computer with administrative privileges is not without some risk. You
will be much more susceptible to some types of malware, particularly
adware and spyware. While using a computer with limited privileges
isn't the cure-all, silver bullet that some claim it to be, any
experienced IT professional will verify that doing so definitely reduces
that amount of damage and depth of penetration by the malware. If you
get infected/infested while running as an administrator, the odds are
much greater that any malware will be extremely difficult, if not
impossible, to remove with formating the hard drive and starting anew.
The intruding malware will have the same privileges to all of the files
on your hard drive that you do.

As long as you're willing and able to deal with the potential
consequences, the choice is certainly yours. A technically competent
user who is aware of the risks and knows how to take proper precautions
can usually safely operate with administrative privileges; I do so
myself. I simply don't recommend it for the average computer user.


--

Bruce Chambers

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You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on having
both at once. - RAH

 

[Guest]

Thanks Bruce,
I understand all you are saying and I am fine eith the way things are
working. I guess my desire was that no users with admin rights would appear