Upgrade to Win2000 for home - Can I avoid passwords and user IDs?

[David_Jones]

Hi,

We currently use Win98 at home, but I am thinking of buying a spare Win2000 license from work since Win98 support is heading out the door, and it is getting a little long in the tooth.

However, I have only used Win2000 in a business environment, and I was wondering if we can set it up so that you skip the login screen (just boot up straight to the desktop like Win98 can).

There is no reason to use profiles or passwords for us at home, and my family will definately not regard that as a move forward!

Thanks,

David.

[reboot]

Yup. If you only have one user, that's all you need to set up, then don't add any users during the installation, and it will go right into Windows.

[ktkendall]

You will still in essence have to have a user setup or have it log in automatically as administrator, but you under user properties you can disable manual login and it will prompt you for what account it should log you in automatically as. I have win2000 laptop and I'm set up that way, and it works well.

[KHT]

Yes, you can set it up so it will automatically log on to a user without a password.

During setup, don`t designate a password for the administrator, and the OS will automatically boot to admin. It can be changed at any time if you miss it.

Later, you can create a default user that doesn`t have admin rights, Power User maybe, and designate that user, (user name "family" for instance) and designate that user as the default. It will boot to that user without a prompt just like W98. Or of course just leave admin the default if you`re not concerned with someone playing with all the cool administrative consoles and snap ins and such.. Just be aware that the admin can actually deny rights\permissions to him\herself to critical files\folders with the security tab.

[jeresimo]

When I took a Class in Win 2000 Pro years ago. We were told that it is better to log in with the three hand salute (Crtl, Alt plus del). This is for the first defense from any TROJAN that sneaked into your system. The said hand salute will not wake up the said trojan.

[David_Jones]

Thanks guys.

I think I will go with the option of creating the family user without admin rights, and have that open up by default.

I like the idea of making it harder for Trojans to run, but the hassle I would get will far outweigh that potential issue! In any case, I will have anti-virus, (fairly) secure IE and OE settings, and backups so I should be safe enough.

Thanks for your help!

David.