Vista login question...(n00b style)

[osaddict]

Right, I feel like a bit of a newbie asking such a question, however, ask I shall...

We have a few machines running Vista Business, just stand alone machines. Now, to enhance security I would like to password protect the user accounts, simple enough, however, I wanted to know the safest way to protect myself against users forgetting passwords.

I was simply going to create another user on the PCs in question (it's only 3-4 PCs atm) which would be an administrator - i.e. me, and I could give it a password.

In this way, if the user forgets their password then I could login under my account, and reset the password for their account.

This all seems fine, and should work in my opinion - is this correct?

[Thrax]

That's correct. An administrator-level account can reset the password of any other user on the system.

[osaddict]

I looked on Google after this post a bit more...

What's the deal with 'reset password' vs change password? - From what I can see when you have two equal accounts (both admins) you can change the password.

It warns that 'reseting' the password can cause all sorts of problems for the user - in this case would that be the situation? - I'm thinking not, but I can't think of that easy a way to test it! (I don't fancy setting up an exchange account and trying to break it by changing the vista user account password)

Thanks for the reply Thrax... it nearly always seems to be you or kryyst who come to my rescue!

[Thrax]

I believe the password reset chaos refers to encrypted user folders. If a password is reset on such a folder, the contents are unrecoverable.

I can't imagine you'd have a scenario where you'd outrightly reset the password, anyhow. A simple change to something temporary and memorable with the "user must change password at next logon" box ticked would be sufficient.