Setting up a second user.

barman58 · Nov 14, 2021

As I said previously you can still have the same control as your two user setup, if you wish,by using the UAC there is an explanation here ...

Change User Account Control (UAC) Settings in Windows 11 Tutorial

This tutorial will show you how to change User Account Control (UAC) settings in Windows 11. User Account Control (UAC) helps prevent malware from damaging a PC and helps organizations deploy a better-managed desktop. With UAC, apps and tasks always run in the security context of a...

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TheMystic · Nov 14, 2021

Winuser said:
I have been doing it for years and there has never been any confusion. Maybe it's an OCD thing but I want an Admin Account for when I want to make any changes and a User Account that doesn't have Admin rights. I know it can be setup like that in Win 10. I don't know if I did something different when I setup the two users in Win 10 or if the option has been removed in Win 11. I'm going to go ahead and admit defeat trying to set it up in Win 11. I'm going to make a new user with my name and change it to Admin then remove the original user. Another OCD moment, I don't want my user's name to be the first 5 characters of my email. It looks like I just randomly hit keys and yes, it bothers me.

I also dislike the user name that MS account provides by default (as it is incomplete), and hate the fact that they don't allow the option to choose our user name during setup. Just don't get the logic of some of the things big tech do.

That said, here is what you can try:

1. Create a new admin user with a name of your choice.
2. Delete the existing MS user.
3. Create a new standard user with a name of your choice.
4. Login to MS account on one of the user, i.e change local account to MS account.
5. On the other user, i guess you won't be able to repeat step 4, i.e. converting the user to the same MS account used in step 4. But here, you login to Edge using the same MS account. When you do that, I guess you will get a prompt asking if you want to use the same account for all apps, Store and other system settings. When prompted, choose 'yes'.

If this works, then I guess you'll have both users using the same MS account.

Winuser · Nov 14, 2021

TheMystic said:
I also dislike the user name that MS account provides by default (as it is incomplete), and hate the fact that they don't allow the option to choose our user name during setup. Just don't get the logic of some of the things big tech do.

That said, here is what you can try:

1. Create a new admin user with a name of your choice.
2. Delete the existing MS user.
3. Create a new standard user with a name of your choice.
4. Login to MS account on one of the user, i.e change local account to MS account.
5. On the other user, i guess you won't be able to repeat step 4, i.e. converting the user to the same MS account used in step 4. But here, you login to Edge using the same MS account. When you do that, I guess you will get a prompt asking if you want to use the same account for all apps, Store and other system settings. When prompted, choose 'yes'.

If this works, then I guess you'll have both users using the same MS account.

I did create the new user account earlier today. Once the new user was setup as admin, I deleted the original user. Seeing how it's a VM and I'm only going to use it for testing I'm going to leave it as is for now. I have read the guide on how to change the users name but I find it just as easy if not easier to just add another user.

Winuser · Nov 14, 2021

I want to thank everyone for the help! I have added a new user with my name and deleted the original user. I'm going to keep it at one user for now. With winter approaching and the fact I won't be working until spring I'm sure I'll get bored and try again. :)

TheMystic · Nov 14, 2021

Winuser said:
I did create the new user account earlier today. Once the new user was setup as admin, I deleted the original user. Seeing how it's a VM and I'm only going to use it for testing I'm going to leave it as is for now. I have read the guide on how to change the users name but I find it just as easy if not easier to just add another user.

Changing the user name post creation is almost impossible. Even if you try changing registry keys, there will be a handful that will give errors. I have seen these are usually associated with OneDrive (if it is a fresh setup). Workarounds on this will usually create other problems down the line.

So the best way that works now is to use a non-Microsoft email (preferably a fake email) during setup or using the back button on the screen when prompted to enter Microsoft account credentials. Both options then allow the user to create a local account instead during setup.

I don't understand why one should use tricks for such simple things. But give the method above a try. It isn't time consuming and you'll know whether it works or not without requiring much time and effort.

Winuser · Nov 15, 2021

TheMystic said:
Changing the user name post creation is almost impossible. Even if you try changing registry keys, there will be a handful that will give errors. I have seen these are usually associated with OneDrive (if it is a fresh setup). Workarounds on this will usually create other problems down the line.

So the best way that works now is to use a non-Microsoft email (preferably a fake email) during setup or using the back button on the screen when prompted to enter Microsoft account credentials. Both options then allow the user to create a local account instead during setup.

I don't understand why one should use tricks for such simple things. But give the method above a try. It isn't time consuming and you'll know whether it works or not without requiring much time and effort.

I don't understand why MS won't allow us to choose the name we want as our user's name. I'm sure they get plenty of feedback. When I clean install, I usually don't sign in to my Account until after the install. For whatever reason, MS has decided to make it harder to clean install Win 11 Home without signing in to a MS Account.

Bree · Nov 15, 2021

Winuser said:
For whatever reason, MS has decided to make it harder to clean install Win 11 Home without signing in to a MS Account.

This is not new for 11. With each new version of 10 Microsoft have made it increasingly difficult to avoid using an MS account for Home. There are still workarounds though involving disconnecting from the internet.

If installing a Windows 11 Home edition and you currently do not have an Internet connection available, press the Shift + F10 keys to open a command prompt. Copy and paste the taskkill /F /IM oobenetworkconnectionflow.exe command into the command prompt, and press Enter. Close the command prompt, and continue at step 21D to set up a local account.

Clean Install Windows 11 Tutorial

This tutorial will show you step by step on how to clean install Windows 11 at boot on your PC with or without an Internet connection and setup with a local account or Microsoft account. Windows 11 has all the power and security of Windows 10 with a redesigned and refreshed look. It also comes...

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jimbo45 · Feb 1, 2022

Another way - if you understand how to install on physical vhdx systems and boot from them (if you separate the OS and data -- data can be "common" between the two OS'es) a 45GB amount per Windows OS can be quite sufficient. Then have user A on OS 1 and User B on OS 2.

Trick is when initially creating this VM is to define a large disk area then on it create a large partition with one EFI partititon, an MSR partition and one big standard NTFS partition . This will all be say on Volume D. On that volume create your Windows vhdx files, attach vdhdx and install Windows. Easy via dism /apply-image etc and install boot loader. Digital activation will be preserved however many "Clones" like this you create.

Then at boot simply boot the Windows system you want -- Windows will always be on the "C" drive and the "D" drive is available to any of those logged on systems for any "common data files" you need.

As far as Windows HOME using a local account -- I don't have Windows home but I believe there are decent get arounds to enable installing without using a Microsoft account.

Quite interesting as well -- if you do this IN a VM -- i.e define the "big disk" as the single SATA disk and create efi etc on it you can by the same technique create multiple OS'es to boot from via the SAME VM i.e you only need a single VM for "multiple OS'es"

Here I've got a choice when I start the VM to boot either W10 or W11.
From either Guest the disk mapping looks :

Each OS when booted will show a C drive of - in my case I allocated 60 GB but can be less while the files shown on D are the vhdx files and anything else one wants to store on it. The VM config itself on the host just has a single Disk defined !! When booting the standard blue bcdboot menu screen is presented -- from WITHIN the VM !!. Either W10 or W11 can be booted here - note not concurrently though.

Something like this might be possible on HYPER-V hosts but I've found HYPER-V a bit cumbersome to use even if it's quite efficient. Also on a Spare NAS I've oodles of spare storage space with double XEON processors ( 2 complete XEON CPU's) so using QEMU/KVM for Windows Guest VM's makes perfect sense to me. Poodle faking the CP topography via CPU choice in the VM config on the host so Windows thinks CPU is valid and using TPM emulation it's good to go for W11 too.

Cheers
jimbo