Setting new pc without password

cherry76

I am expecting delivery a dell vostro 3471 next week. I do not want to create a password to log in to make it easier for one member of the family to use without having to remember it when log in. Pl how do I bypass it during set up? Also in the past I had to create recovery disc as back up using DVD. Do I still need to do that? The pc runs on windows 10 professional. It should be a straight forward set up I hope but just getting prepared. I have asked dell but was advised to contact technical support. Thanks

mchale

On mine a windows 10 machine, when asked to input a password at the initial boot up stage I just left it blank, and carried on with the boot up

RumRat

You have the choice of using a PIN instead of a password.....

Frozen_up_north

Regarding a recovery disk, it’s a bit “old school”. You really should be looking to make a regular full backup to an external drive. I use a USB 3 external drive and Acronis. Once you have run the inevitable Windows updates and installed your printer, set your network up, etc. make a backup called “original_install” or whatever, then you can fairly quickly revert to a start point if needed.

I’ve lost count of the number of people who have missing files/photos due to computer failures of one sort or another... few bother to backup anything.

Neil_Jones

cherry76 wrote: »

I am expecting delivery a dell vostro 3471 next week. I do not want to create a password to log in to make it easier for one member of the family to use without having to remember it when log in. Pl how do I bypass it during set up? Also in the past I had to create recovery disc as back up using DVD. Do I still need to do that? The pc runs on windows 10 professional. It should be a straight forward set up I hope but just getting prepared. I have asked dell but was advised to contact technical support. Thanks

You don't need a password. Also you probably don't want a Microsoft account either but that's easy enough to avert - just don't connect it to the internet before you get to the desktop. Simples.

Re: recovery disks, You may get a Windows disk but that's about it. You don't really need them these days anyway as Windows itself has it all built in and if the reports are to be believed "Internet Recovery" (which MacOS has been doing for the last eight years or so) might be coming to Windows soon too. So you won't even need a disk

Undervalued

Frozen_up_north wrote: »

Regarding a recovery disk, it’s a bit “old school”. You really should be looking to make a regular full backup to an external drive. I use a USB 3 external drive and Acronis. Once you have run the inevitable Windows updates and installed your printer, set your network up, etc. make a backup called “original_install” or whatever, then you can fairly quickly revert to a start point if needed.

I’ve lost count of the number of people who have missing files/photos due to computer failures of one sort or another... few bother to backup anything.

Likewise I have lost count of the number of people who thought they were doing all the right things and diligently made endless backups only to find they weren't valid or readable when they actually needed them!

Being able to restore a complete system, particularly if you are not very tech savvy, is very nice should you need it - providing it actually works. However in doing so you are backing up vast amounts of publicly available software etc in addition to data files that are uniquely yours.

When you are up to your proverbial in alligators, you tend to forget that you objective was to drain the swamp!

J_B

If you do mess up and enter a password, netplwiz (part of W10 - use the search) can rectify that

A.Penny.Saved

You should set a password to protect your PC. Most User accounts have Admin rights which is a big security risk. It makes it easier to perform admin tasks on your PC without your permission. You can then set the PC to autologon by using the Microsoft Sysinternals Autologon program>
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/autologon

jbainbridge

DON’T let it connect to WiFi / internet during first setup ... the latest version of Windows will force you to use a Microsoft account if you do.

cranford

DVD is old school because many laptops don't have a DVD writer/rewriter. As this is a money saving forum, if you already have blank DVD discs then by all means make a recovery DVD set otherwise it could cost you a £5 to buy a pack, about the same as a cheap USB drive.

Neil_Jones

Frozen_up_north wrote: »

I’ve lost count of the number of people who have missing files/photos due to computer failures of one sort or another... few bother to backup anything.

Undervalued wrote: »

Likewise I have lost count of the number of people who thought they were doing all the right things and diligently made endless backups only to find they weren't valid or readable when they actually needed them!

I always remember one customer who came to where I worked once and they'd had a hard drive failure, a "do whatever it needs, I have everything backed up" job. We replaced the drive and got the machine back up and running as per normal but the old drive was mechanically toast and no data was recoverable (or at least without sending it off for professional data recovery at some three figure sum cost to us never mind what the customer would pay). So we informed the customer it was ready and they asked us that if they bought their backups in, would we copy them back to the computer for them. Easy enough to do.

Except the customer hadn't copied the data at all.. They'd just copied the desktop shortcuts somebody had made at some point to the original documents, so all they had was about 15 .LNK files that were now surplus to requirements, including one to "My Pictures". So as you might expect the customer was a bit upset about that but not a fault on our part. Customer later found a backup they didn't know they had so as it turned out they managed to salvage some of it so it wasn't a total loss.

But of course people only ever learn to back stuff up when the computer falls over. It is the harshest way to learn, and most people do cotton on after they come close to (or do) lose data.