Disabling a user account in Windows 7

If a user does not need his/her account for some period of time, you may want to disable his/her account temporarily for security reasons. This article tells you how to disable a user account in Windows 7. Only an administrator can delete or disable user accounts.

1. Click on Start Menu, then right-click on Computer and select Manage as shown.
   
2. In the Computer Management window, select System Tools » Local Users and Groups » Users. Then double-click on a user you want to disable. In the following example picture, we are going to disable user account of Patrick.
   
3. This would open the account properties dialog. In this account properties window, check the check box labeled Account is disabled and click OK button as shown.
   

If later you want to enable the account, you can follow the same steps with the only difference that in the step 3 you un-check the check box labeled Account is disabled.