Windows 7 offers a number of security features that can help protect your computer from unauthorized access. One of these features is the Guest Account feature, which allows you to use a different account on your computer than the one that is used by your normal user account. This account has limited permissions and is designed to provide extra security for your computer. To use the Guest Account feature in Windows 7, you first need to create a new guest account. To do this, open the Accounts dialog box and click on the New Guest Account button. In the new Guest Account dialog box, enter a name for your new account and click on OK. When you create your new guest account, Windows 7 will ask you to provide some information about it. You can either provide all of the information required or you can choose to leave some of this information unspecified. After you have created your new guest account, you can use it to access your computer without having to worry about potential unauthorized access.
The Guest account is for users who need to log on infrequently to check email, search the net, quick document processing…etc. It is disabled by default, but if you want to enable it, changing the name increases machine security.
Change Guest Account Name
First go into Control Panel and click on Administrative Tools.
In the Administrative Tools window click on Local Security Policy.
Under Local Security Policy go to Security Settings \ Local Policies \ Security Options and under Policy on the left side select Accounts: Rename guest account.
Now change the name to whatever you want. Just make sure it is something different than other user accounts so you remember it’s the Guest account. When you’re done click Apply and Ok and close out of the remaining windows.
Now when you go look at your User Accounts, notice the name of the Guest account has been changed.
This simple tip helps guard your computer against a person trying to guess a username and password combination if they’re trying to access your machine. For more on user accounts including on how to enable the Guest account, check out our previous article.
