CHANGING OVER A PC FOR A NEW USER in XP

Since new users are easy to add to a windows XP PC you may just think Every time a PC is reset for a new user just make a new user on the PC. But doing it that way means redoing a lot of user set up. Plus Some programs that are setup on the PC may even require you to set them up again, and surprisingly PC performance will slow for each new user profile you add. This slightly slower performance may have something to do with files arranged and optimized on the hard disk for the original user. So renaming the PC and the User profile is the way to go.

Here are some quick instructions for changing an XP PC for a new user. User profiles do involve passwords and if these instructions looks slightly different to you it may be because I wrote them for a Novell network environment.

• At the PC first Log on to the network with your own username and password
• Log onto the Windows user prompt as the administrative user. We have changed the name of the administrative user on our PCs but PC set up is another topic.

Remove user password

We try to keep the network and Windows password the same so users see only one password prompt. We Passwords rotate every 180 days. New Users get the default password “password” and will be forced to set one by the network at first login.

• In the control panel got to User Accounts
• Click on the staff person user
• Click the Remove My Password Link - If it is not there is no password continue to next step

Rename the PC user

We name PC users with their campus network ID, shared PCs in any office get the default user name we arranged ahead of time.

• Right click MyComputer
• Choose Manage
• Click Local Users and Groups Then Users
• Right click on the user and choose Rename
• Enter the name
• Then double click on the user account and make the full name entry the same – it helps
• Click ok and exit Management Console

Do not remove passwords using the management console

Rename the PC

We name each PC with the campus network ID of the user plus the letters PC at the end. If it is a shared PC we name it for its function like “acqoffice2PC” this name must be unique on the network.

• Right click on MyComputer
• Choose Properties
• On the Computer Name tab click the Change button
• Enter the name
• Click the More button
• Make sure it says “newpaltz.edu”
• Click ok to the properties windows – If you have removed the password it is OK to reboot when prompted

Set Up Automatic Login on a Shared PC

Shared PCs or PCs that login automatically login to the network get the shared network user name we arranged ahead of time. We set up this account with limited network rights because it is used by student workers etc. We also set it up to login automatically and we in fact find this more secure than requiring a password and login for a shared pc. Whenever we have required a password the office invariably writes down the password and sticks it to the monitor for the whole world to read and share with friends.

• Reboot the PC and login at the shared network user
• Logon to the windows prompt with the user “staff” with no password or with whatever name you gave the staff user account.
• Passwords should have been cleared in a prior step
• We have placed a tool we got from the Novell cool tools web page called Autolog to set up automatic logins.
• Set up automatic login with Autolog
• We keep a batch tools folder on every PC with all our scripts and tools.

NOTE: Autolog has an excellent set off command line options with which to script logon we will see this again for changing login from batch files later in PCs in Public