Having an additional local account on Windows 10 is certainly a good idea for security and other purposes. Suppose your friend asks you to borrow your device for a while and you don’t want to hand your privacy and important data to someone else. In such a case, you can create a separate local account on your Windows 10 PC and hand it over to your friend without having a second thought. And this way you can keep retaining both your security and reliability.
How to Create a local account on Windows 10
Here is how to create a local account on Windows 10 –
1] Create a local account using the Settings app
1. Press the Win+I keys together to open Windows Settings.
2. From the settings app, select Accounts.
3. Then choose Family & other users from the left panel.
4. Now go to the “Other users” section (in the right) and click on the Add someone else to this PC (plus sign) option.
5. Now select the I don’t have this person’s sign-in information link.
6. Then choose the Add a user without a Microsoft account option.
7. Now inside the Create an account for this PC section, fill up all the information related to the new local account.
8. Next you need to select three security questions that would help you in case you forget your password.
9. Click the Next button to save the changes.
After completing the above steps, you will see a new local account will be added under the “Other users” section. And this way you can create a local account using the Settings app.
2] Create a local account using Command Prompt
Sometimes doing things with the help of a command-line is even much faster and preferable over the GUI. So, if you’re comfortable using the command line, follow the below steps to create a local account:
1. Run Command Prompt as an Administrator.
2. Once it opens, type the following command and hit Enter:
net user USER_NAME PASSWORD /add
In the command, make sure to change USER_NAME and PASSWORD with the credentials you want to use for the new user account.
3. If you want to add the newly created account to the Administrators group, then type the below command line and press Enter:
net localgroup administrators USER_ACCOUNT /add
Don’t forget to change USER_ACCOUNT with the account name you want to add to the administrators’ group in the above command.
3] Create a local account using Windows PowerShell
To create an administrator or standard local account with PowerShell, use these steps:
1. Open Windows PowerShell with admin permission.
2. Once it opens, type the following command and press the Ente key:
$Password = Read-Host -AsSecureString
3. Type the password for your Windows 10 local account and hit Enter.
4. To create the new account, type the below command line and press Enter:
New-LocalUser "NEW_ACCOUNT_NAME" -Password $Password -FullName "USER_FULL_NAME" -Description "Description of this account.
Note: Make sure to replace the NEW_ACCOUNT_NAME with the account name and USER_FULL_NAME with the user’s full name in the above command line. Besides, change the DESCRIPTION in the above command line with a suitable description that you want to use for your account.
5. Type the following command and press Enter. This will add the account to the correct user group.
Add-LocalGroupMember -Group "Administrators" -Member "NEW_ACCOUNT_NAME"
Note: In the above command line, replace NEW_ACCOUNT_NAME for the account name.
After performing the above steps, you will see that a new account will be placed on your computer with full access to admin rights.