Windows secondary user account for troubleshooting

As usual, Ed Bott has come up with the goods in his Windows tip of the week column on TechRepublic (6 June 2018).

Ed was talking about troubleshooting when a Windows PC starts to play up: that the difficulty is in working out exactly what is going wrong. It is hard to know whether it is the OS, a driver, a hardware failure, an update or something we have inadvertently done ourselves (we will tinker, won't we?!).

Ed recommends that to help us hone in on what is going on, we set up a secondary user account, which we only EVER use for replicating errors on the main system. All we have to do is to sign into our secondary account, and to see if the error occurs there too.

If we can't replicate the error on our 'clean' secondary account, our problem is more likely part of a setting or service associated with our primary user profile.

Ed says:

On any Windows 10 PC, you can create a new user account by going to Settings > Accounts > Family & Other People. Under the Other People heading, click Add Someone Else To This PC.

The default options strongly push you to use an existing Microsoft account or create a new one. Don't enter an e-mail address, as prompted. Instead, create a local account by looking for the small links at the bottom of the next two dialog boxes. Click I Don't Have This Person's Sign-in Information, click Next, and then click Add A User Without A Microsoft Account.

So easy.


Sam

• Reference: Bott, E. (6 June 2018). Windows tip of the week: How to create a secondary account for troubleshooting. Retrieved from http://enews.techrepublic.com/hostedemail/email.htm?CID=51695109280&ch=0439FDABFF0CB7A368EA60FA22807EF9&h=8e32c31372369f3285040b904c74b53b&ei=sYL3aTGON&schema=echo3