Windows UAC (User Account Control) provides many options in Windows 7 that has made user administration more easy. However, for people who still use pre-Vista Windows OS, or would like to simply have more control over user accounts, require certain software that may give them more advanced options. Recently, we came across one such software called the Accounts Tuner. It is a free app that allows easy management of user rights on a local computer or a server with a simple interface and enriched options such as setting password length, expiration dates, password attributes and lockout durations.
To be able to configure this software on a local computer or a server, the user will require Administrative privileges. When you login in with an Administrator account, all features can be customized within a small interface of the Accounts Tuner. After selecting an account, you can choose to disable or lock the account (to make the account unusable until enabled again), change password attributes (including adding or removing any password expiration limitations) and set other options such as restricting a user/s to change password every few days. Other options include adding a minimum and maximum password length, setting a lockout duration and an account lockout in case of a set number of failed login attempts.
It would have been really nice if the Accounts Tuner allowed creating,renaming, setting passwords and deleting users, right from its small interface, as it entails an important part of user account control. This software can be particularly useful for people that wish to acquire some level of security present in servers such as a Domain Controller. It can be used with a lot of convenience to apply user account limitations to protect the security of a common PC and especially for servers that may be functional under a less secure network environment. For example, the password history length option can be used to set the minimum amount of days a password cannot be reused for. In my previous job my network administrator always used to set password related restrictions that meant that even system administrators like me had to change passwords every few days for the best interest of network security. Obviously I could have changed by group policy but I’m sure that would have gotten me in a lot of trouble from my former boss!
This freeware works on
- Windows 2000
- Windows XP
- Windows Vista
- Windows 7
- Windows Server 2003
- Windows Server 2008 R2 / 32-bit
