If something needed Admin privileges, UAC would grey the screen and pop up a box, asking you to escalate to Admin level. This made users run a safe user account by default. Microsoft stopped this by introducing UAC (User Account Control) in Windows Vista. Many programs had been converted from DOS-based Windows where that was the norm: in Windows 95, Windows 98/98SE and Windows ME, every user could modify everything. Unfortunately, few people used them, partly because of badly-written third-party software that could only be installed from root accounts. Right from the beginning, Windows XP had exactly the same design, with an Admin (root) account and less powerful user accounts. Unix, Linux and Unix-based Apple Mac OS X users generally used less powerful accounts, which meant any malware couldn’t cause as much damage. One reason for its insecurity was that most people logged on using what Unix users would call a “root account” with the power to do anything. Windows XP was – and still is – famously insecure. It was even in Windows XP, but you had to boot Windows in Safe Mode – or edit the registry – to see it. It first appeared in its current form in Windows Vista a decade ago, and has been in every version of Windows since. The “Hidden Administrator Account” has been around even longer. The email-based Microsoft Account logon system was also introduced four years ago, in 2012. Windows 10’s privacy settings, for example, are more or less identical to the ones in Windows 8. The appearance of every new version of Microsoft Windows usually creates panic in people who think they’ve found something new, when it’s actually something old. What is to stop any malware installing itself on your PC?Īlso, is it best to enable the hidden Administrator account should it become necessary to access it for any reason? Marcus
Unlike the normal Administrator account, this runs all programs with admin rights by default, without that annoying UAC box appearing when you attempt to run a program. (Of course, one way to ensure privacy is to create a new account and just use it for log in purposes.)įrom what I understand, Windows 10 automatically generates another super or elevated Administrator account during installation, and this account is hidden by default for security reasons.
However, to get the real benefits of Windows 10 requires creating a Microsoft account. Over the years from Windows XP through Vista, Windows 7 and up to 8.1, I have always used local accounts, where you could easily control the security of your operating system by using a password-protected standard user account.
We have two types of user accounts: local and Microsoft accounts.
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