I have a mild form of security paranoia. That's why, on my Macs, I have at least two accounts: an administrator account, and a separate user account for daily work. Even on my MacBook Pro, where I'm the only user, I have an administrator and a user account. I never log in to that administrator account, except to make backups of the machine. The advantage of this set-up is that whenever a program tries to do something to the system, I get asked for the administrator user name and password. It's a step up in security from just running as an administrator. To be sure, as administrator, you'll still get asked for your password when you want to change the system, but I feel that running as a regular user gives me an extra coating of Protection™.

That said, I went about installing Windows XP SP2 under Parallels Desktop. I was pleasantly surprised when the installation process asked me for an "administrator password." Yes! Security nirvana, here I come! Further along in the process, I was given the option to define up to five users, and since I only have the one -- myself -- that's what I put in.

Then, at the end of the installation process, Windows starts, and I'm automatically logged in. Huh? What's that? No log-in screen, no selection of users, no password prompt? Must be a setting somewhere, right? So I amble over to the account settings control panel. Once there, I see only one user, me, apart from an "inactive" guest user. Where's my administrator? Why am I an administrator? What's my password? Did the installation program just assume that the first user should be the administrator? Or does it simply assign the administrator password to everyone?

Never fear! I'll create an admin, and make myself a regular user. Problem solved! I try to create a user called "administrator," but I'm rebuked by a dialog telling me that this user already exists. Huh? How can that be? This user is not on the list, nor is he under "documents and settings" on the file system.

I've got stuff to do, and it's getting late. That's as good an excuse to give up. At least I'll make sure I have to log in explicitly, instead of this auto-login crap. And now this is the weird part. It's already set to use the login screen. And yet I get auto-logged in.

A bit more poking around, and a re-install of XP later (with two users this time), reveals some answers.

Windows creates a phantom user who has the administrator password. The user is called administrator, but is nowhere to be found.

All the users created during the installation process are created as administrators, but don't have a password assigned!

If you set up only one user, and it doesn't have a password, Windows will log you in automatically, regardless of your other settings. This makes sense, in a way, but it's bothersome that the behavior is contrary to what you set in the user accounts control panel.

|

If I'm ever in a position where I can require people to read stuff so that they'll be better at their job, Joel Spolsky's "Joel on Software" would be high on the list. Of course, with my luck, the company would be so cheap that they wouldn't want to spend the $25 ($17 on Amazon) for the book. Fortunately, there's a website, where everything that's in the book is available for free. But really, that's a false economy, because if your people have to read this on the web, they'll be doing it on company time, whereas if you give them the book, they'll be reading it during take-off and landing, when they don't have anything else to do anyway.