Create a local user or administrator account in Windows 10

You can create a local user account (an offline account) for anyone who will frequently use your PC. The best option in most cases, though, is for everyone who uses your PC to have a Microsoft account.

If needed, the local user account can have administrator permissions; however, it’s better to just create a local user account whenever possible.

Caution: A user with an administrator account can access anything on the system, and any malware they encounter can use the administrator permissions to potentially infect or damage any files on the system. Only grant that level of access when absolutely necessary and to people you trust.

As you create an account, remember that choosing a password and keeping it safe are essential steps. Because we don’t know your password, if you forget it or lose it, we can’t recover it for you.

If you’re using Windows 10, version 1803 and later, you can add security questions as you’ll see in step 4 under Create a local user account. With answers to your security questions, you can reset your Windows 10 local account password. Not sure which version you have? You can check your version.

Create a local user account

Select Start > Settings > Accounts and then select Family & other users. (In some versions of Windows you’ll see Other users.)

Select Add someone else to this PC.

Select I don’t have this person’s sign-in information, and on the next page, select Add a user without a Microsoft account.

Enter a user name, password, or password hint—or choose security questions—and then select Next.

Change a local user account to an administrator account

Select Start > Settings > Accounts .

Under Family & other users, select the account owner name (you should see «Local Account» below the name), then select Change account type.

Note: If you choose an account that shows an email address or doesn’t say «Local account», then you’re giving administrator permissions to a Microsoft account, not a local account.

Under Account type, select Administrator, and then select OK.

Sign in with the new administrator account.

Add or remove accounts on your PC

This article describes how to add or remove accounts on your PC. Having different accounts on a shared PC lets multiple people use the same device, all while giving everyone their own sign-in info, plus access to their own files, browser favorites, and desktop settings.

In addition, if you use the same PC for personal projects and work or school, you may want to add different accounts to your PC.

Note: If you have a new device, you may see an account named «defaultuser0″—this account is inactive and it won’t hurt your device or give anyone else access. If you want to remove it, you can restart your device and then sign in again.

Add people to a home PC

The best way to add someone to your PC is to have them sign in with a Microsoft account. Learn more about Microsoft accounts in Sign in with a Microsoft account.

On Windows 10 Home and Windows 10 Professional editions:

Select Start > Settings > Accounts > Family & other users.

Under Other users, select Add someone else to this PC.

Enter that person’s Microsoft account information and follow the prompts.

If you need to remove that person’s sign-in information from your PC:

Select Start > Settings > Accounts > Family & o ther users.

Select the person’s name or email address, then select Remove. Note that this will not delete the person’s Microsoft account, it will just remove their sign-in info from your PC.

Add people to a work or school PC

The best approach is for everyone who shares a PC at work or school to have their own Microsoft account. Learn more about Microsoft accounts in Sign in with a Microsoft account.

To add someone with an existing Microsoft account:

Select Start > Settings > Accounts > Other users (in some Windows editions, it may be labeled as Other people or Family & other users).

Under Work or school users, select Add a work or school user.

Enter that person’s user account, select the account type, and then select Add.

If you need to remove that person’s sign-in information from your PC:

Select Start > Settings > Accounts > O ther users.

Select the person’s name or email address, then select Remove.

Read the disclosure and select Delete account and data. Note that this will not delete the person’s Microsoft account, but it will remove their sign-in info and account data from your PC.

Add work or school accounts to your PC

If you’re using the same PC for both personal and school or business work, you may want to add various accounts to your PC to make it easier for you to get to the files, apps, and information associated with each account. When you access work or school, you’ll be connected to your organization’s domain and have access to its resources.

To add another account to your PC:

Select Start > Settings > Accounts > Access work or school .

Select Connect, then follow the prompts to add the accounts.

If you need to remove an account from your PC:

Select Start > Settings > Accounts > Access work or school .

Select the account you wish to remove, then select Disconnect.

Select Yes to confirm your actions. Note that this will not delete the account entirely, it will just remove access from your PC

Note: If an account is either the only account on the PC or the primary account on the PC, it can’t be removed.

Add accounts used by apps

To make signing in to your accounts easier and faster, you may want to add accounts for different apps.

To add an account used by apps to your PC:

Select Start > Settings > Accounts > Email & accounts .

To add an account used by email. calendar, or contacts, select Add an account under Accounts used by email, calendar, and contacts. For other apps, select Add a Microsoft account or Add a work or school account.

Follow the prompts to add the account.

To remove an account used by apps from your PC:

Select Start > Settings > Accounts > Email & accounts .

Select the account you wish to remove, then select Remove.

Select Yes to confirm your actions.

Add people to a family group

If you’ve added your family’s Microsoft accounts to your PC, you can set them up as a Microsoft family. It’s a free service that helps families stay connected and keep kids safer on Windows 10 and Xbox One devices, along with Android devices running Microsoft Launcher.

Note: If you have trouble adding a Microsoft account, see Microsoft account FAQ.

Add new user account from command line (CMD)

Some times we may want to add new users from command line instead of using the UI. For example, if we have to add some 100 users, using a script will save lot of time and manual effort. Windows provides net user command for this purpose. This command works on Windows 2000, Windows XP/2003, Vista and Windows 7.

To add a new user account on the local computer:

Example: To add a new user account with the loginid John and with password fadf24as

Hide password

If you do not want the password to be visible while adding new user account, you can use ‘*’ as shown below.

To add a new user account to the domain:

Note that the command does not include the domain name.

Rename a user account

Net use command does not have any switches to rename a user account. But we can do that using wmic commands. Please check this – Rename user accounts on Windows

Few more Advanced uses of net user command.

To set user full name while creating the user account

To allow user to change password:

To restrict user not to change the password:

To set account expiry time we can use /EXPIRES switch. This can also be used to set that the account never expires.

To specify if the user must have a password set we can use /PASSWORDREQ switch. For more information on all net user options, read this – Net user command: syntax and examples

How to create a new administrator account?

An administrator account can’t be created directly. We first need to create a user account and then add the user to the administrators group.

Errors:

1. If you don’t have privileges to add new user account to the system, you would get an error like below.
2. While adding user to domain, make sure that your computer is connected to the domain. Otherwise it throws up below error.

Related Posts:

Possibly the most in-depth article about adding and deleting users by far. Thank you.

Is there a command/script to create a user in multiple servers at a time, also give him a mandatory chance to change his login password once he logs in the next time, in Windows Server 2003 OS?

You need to run your script on each of the servers. To make it mandatory to change the password, you can use the switch /LOGONPASSWORDCHG.
Command is:
net user loginname password /add /LOGONPASSWORDCHG:yes

Thanks for sharing this. I need to write a batch file to create users through command line. Your tip has helped me. This site is very useful for command prompt users on windows.

Is it possible to create a new user account without specifying a password?

I’m not aware of a way to create user acounts without a password and I wouldn’t recommend it. However I would suggest you could use a randomly generated string to use as the password when the account is created. Or how about the current system time using %time%. For example:
net user loginname %time% /add

It may not work if your password policy is more restrictive.

It is possible
Just type:
Net user Username /ADD

tried this tell’s me it worked then i go switch user and Nothing

thats because you need to login to your account say you had 2 accounts 1 admin the other not you would create the new account dosnt show login to the non admin 1 the lock it u will the find it by pressing swithch user

iam having a username as the member of administrator group. but while using to add a user acc in command prompt it shows the error as system error 5 has occured access denied.

can anyone help this

Are you doing it from elevated administrator command prompt?

Thanks a lot. Simple and solves the purpose immediately.

I am using the /EXPIRES:NEVER switch on the end of the command, however the Never Expires checkbow is not ticked when i check the properties

/Expires switch is for the account but not for the password. /Expires:Never actually sets your a/c not to expire, but not for the password.

Why does mine says access is denied?

Make sure that you have administrator privileges to add new user account.

is it possible to create a user from command promt with normal user

No. Only users with admin privileges can add new users.

Can you please tell me. How to create bulk user in local machine user name & password with Never EXPIRES ..

You can use for loop and create user accounts in bulk.
Check this: For loop examples

wmic path Win32_UserAccount WHERE Name=’PUT_USER_NAME_HERE’ set PasswordExpires=false

Thanks for this article! You have saved me!!
Ciao from Italy

Hey, sorry to ask but how do i get past the System Error 5?

I am on the only Admin account on my lapyop, but it still only says that whenever i try to change anythimg abouy accounts.

Hey, did you tried to lunch command promt: right-click>run as administrator?

You need to check the reply given by admin:
*********************
admin August 27, 2012 at 7:29 am

Are you doing it from elevated administrator command prompt?
************************************************
For elevated command prompt , the below link might be helpful to you
http://www.windows-commandline.com/elevated-command-prompt/

How do I create a local user account on a Domain server? Is there a command that I can use? There is no facility to add a local account on a Domain machine. Please assist

This scenario well describes my issue. How can I get admin. privileges using the embedded Administrator?

An administrator account can’t be created directly. We first need to create a user account and then add the user to the administrators group.

If you don’t have privileges to add new user account to the system, you would get an error like below.
C:\>net user John /add
System error 5 has occurred.
Access is denied.
C:\>

I followed the instructions for command prompt. Keep getting the message: “is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file”
I do not have the right click option on command. Have to type Command Prompt in search to to open, then type in the command line which gives me the above posted result.

Hold CTrl and shift together then click on cmd icon after you search it .
This should open as admin.
Fixes your right click problem .

How do you get rid of “system error 5 has occurred” and make me to be able to use commands

Niels, please read the comments, this question was answered 5 times already – hint: elevated privileges.

Command ran successfully – But user directory structure is not there.

For example, under Documents and Settings there is not a directory of the new users Name.

Does the user have to login once for that to be created ?

Yes, account must be logged into to make default profile for user.

My Windows could not start up normally.
And with recovery I needed to login with an user account. But Windows did not see my one account. (that account have administrator access). So what I have done. Next: rebooted my pc into safe mode with cmd
In cmd I made an new administrator account.
Using this cmd code: net username password /ADD
Then i rebooted my pc into advanced recovery. Where I used the option:
Bring Windows back to a restore point.
And logged in with the account I made in cmd.

This helped for me

for creating the user id in local server below is the commend

net user arul “[email protected]″ /ADD /FULLNAME:”James areul” /comment:”server support enginer” /LOGONPASSWORDCHG:yes

I know that you need to be an administrator to run the commands.If you don’t have privileges , you would get an error like below.
System error 5 has occurred.
Access is denied.

I want to query the groups of the user remotely.
net user John /domain
I am able to run this command when i run it via rdp.
But when the same is done via powershell with the administrator, it still gives me a Access is denied error.
How can i resolve this ?

Thanks to your answer. I am also need how to create admin user account with password using CMD-line. Note that when I create it, the password must hidden when I write the password.
Thank you for Your Help me.

Added command in the post to hide the password. Check this out.
Adding admin account is done in two steps, first add user account and then give admin privileges to the account.

But can you add a Microsoft Account with command com?

Useful information here. Keep it up.

Is it possible to use this command to create a user on another machine other than the one you’re actually on when machines are in a workgroup and not on a domain?

Hello Andrew, looking at the syntax the ‘net user’ command supports, I do not think that it can handle workgroup scenario. I would suggest you to try psexec tool by Microsoft.

This was very helpful. 🙂

I came across this article and wondered if maybe you could help. I created a local account for my son on my laptop but I cannot open it every time I try it says logging out. So I tried creating his account as set up in your article and it’s still doing the same I had windows 8 then 8.1 and now 10 and since I updated to 10 I have not been able to access his account I have deleted and added it several times each a different way with no success on any of them. Every thing is up to date and I even ran some kind of system check on it any advice?

In my laptop, I forget the password. How can I set a new user through cmd in safe mode and how I retrieve the data which has been saved in Old User.

I recently bought a laptop that automatically logs in on start up to the standard account, but also has an admin account. Log off and Switch Users don’t allow me to change accounts, it just logs right back in to the standard user account. Tried using runas /user:USername cmd to try and enable elevated privileges, but password is not being accepted. Any ideas?

How long until the commands that create a new domain user and the one that adds it to the domain admins group will take. Iam required to know but I dont have an access to a network to test it.

The commands should finish in few seconds.

Do you know if it is possible to create a small script that would create a standard user with the name taken from the PC-NAME?

I am thinking I would need to use the equivalent of grep for windows? I would need to check to see if there was a command to show computer name, maybe output it to a file and then pull the information from it?

Anyone come across anything like this?

Can you please assist. I was adding an new user on cmd and I did a mistake I only included the username not the password like this “net user (username) /ADD”. then when I try to log in it needs the password while I didn’t set it, and now I’m in trouble please help.

Can you please assist. I have been created a new user my leptop using cmd and I did not included the password like this ” net user ( username ) / ADD “. then when I try to log in to the user it needs password while I didn’t set it.

Does it create a account with admin permissions or standard account permissions…

Newly created user gets automatically deleted on restart, created in cmd access from advanced startup f8.
Is windows 8 very stupid, or am i doing anything wrong?

This works but when you add it in the administrators group. It wont be like a “real admin” account. When you launch cmd it wont start “as admin”

Test comment from Giri 1

Good afternoon! I’ve seen that it is possible to create a user for a certain domain by cmd, but wanted to know if you have how to enter the user soon in a domain group, is it possible?