Adding a password to a user account in Windows 7

When you create a new user account in Windows 7, Windows assigns no password to it. It is up to you, to assign a password to an account. This article details how you can assign a password to a user account in Windows 7.

Password can be assigned by a user himself/herself or an administrator can do this job for a user. If you are a standard user, you can log on to your account and change your password.

Assigning password to your own account

  1. Login to your Windows account (the account to which you want to assign a password).
  2. Open Control Panel by clicking on Start Menu and then clicking on Control Panel.
  3. Click on the category User Accounts and Family Safety. Then click on User Accounts as shown.

  4. In the next window, click on Create a password for your account.

  5. In the next window, type a password, type again the password to confirm it. You may optionally type a password hint too. This password hint appears at the logon screen. This may be helpful if you forget password. But be careful not to type a plain hint as all users logging on to Windows would be able to see this hint. Make the hint a little cryptic – something only you would understand. Click Create Password after you have filled the password fields and optionally the hint.

  6. That’s it. Next time, you would logon to Windows, it will ask the password. So remember the password or you would be locked out.

Assigning password to other users

If you are an administrator, you can assign passwords to other users. Follow these instructions to know how to do so. In the following example, we would be assigning password to a standard user Patrick.

Note that when you change a user’s password that user would not be able to decrypt the files that user encrypted before you changes that user’s password.

  1. Open Control Panel by clicking on Start Menu and then clicking on Control Panel.
  2. Click on the category User Accounts and Family Safety. Then click on User Accounts as shown.

  3. In the next window, click on Manage another account as shown.

  4. Select a user account from the list, to which you want to assign a password. In this example, we will be changing password for a standard account user Patrick.

  5. In the next window, click on Create a password on the left side.

  6. In the next window, type a password, type again the password to confirm it. You may optionally type a password hint too. But it is not recommended to type a hint for another user. Click Create Password after you have filled the password fields.