Microsoft Windows Home Server 2011 : Adding a New User

You can’t access Windows Home Server shares until you configure Windows Home Server with a user account that has the same logon name as a user account on the client computer. You have two ways to go about this:

• If the user account already exists on the client, create a new account on Windows Home Server that uses the same username.
  
  
• If the user account doesn’t exist on the client, create the account both on the client and on Windows Home Server. (It doesn’t matter which order you do this; just make sure that both accounts have the same username and password.)
  
  

Before getting to the specifics of creating a user account on Windows Home Server, the next few sections take you through some important password-related material.

Setting the Password Length and Complexity

Windows Home Server maintains several password policies that determine the length and complexity of the passwords you can assign to the Windows Home Server accounts. Before creating an account, you should specify the policy you want to use. You have four choices:

• Weak—This is the default policy, and it has no restrictions on password length or complexity. You can specify any password you want for most users (with the exception of users granted Remote Access; see the Strong policy, which follows). Note that this policy implies that you can set up accounts without any password.
  
  
• Medium—This policy requires that all passwords be at least five characters long. This policy has no restrictions on password complexity.
  
  
• Best—This policy requires that all passwords be at least five characters long and that they contain three out of the following four character types: lowercase letters, uppercase letters, numbers, and symbols (!, @, #, $, and so on).
  
  
• Strong—This policy requires that all passwords be at least seven characters long and that they contain three out of the following four character types: lowercase letters, uppercase letters, numbers, and symbols (!, @, #, $, and so on). Note that every user who gets Remote Access must have a strong password, even if you’ve configured Windows Home Server to use the Weak or Medium policy.
  
  

Follow these steps to specify the Windows Home Server password policy:

1.	Launch the Windows Home Server Dashboard.
2.	Select the Users section.
3.	Click Set the Password Policy. The Dashboard opens the Change the Password Policy dialog box, shown in Figure 1. Figure 1. In the Change the Password Policy dialog box, use the Password Policy for User Accounts slider to set the user accounts password policy.
4.	Click and drag the Password Policy for User Accounts slider to the policy setting you want: Weak, Medium, Best, or Strong.
5.	Click Change Policy and then click OK when Windows Home Server confirms the change.

Customizing the Password Length Requirement

You saw in the previous section that each Windows Home Server password policy has a length component:

• Weak—Passwords can be any length.
  
  
• Medium—Passwords must be at least five characters.
  
  
• Best—Passwords must be at least five characters.
  
  
• Strong—Passwords must be at least seven characters.
  
  

To increase security on your Windows Home Server, you might want to override these minimums. For example, you might want to require a minimum length of 8 characters or more for all users to make your network even safer from potential Internet-based intrusions.

You can override the minimum password length using the Local Group Policy Editor. Follow these steps:

1.	Log on to the Windows Home Server computer, or establish a Remote Desktop connection to the server.
2.	Select Start, type group, and then click Edit Group Policy in the search results. The Local Group Policy Editor appears.
3.	Select the Computer Configuration, Windows Settings, Security Settings, Account Policies, Password Policy branch.
4.	Double-click the Minimum Password Length policy.
5.	Use the Password Must Be at Least text box to type your new minimum password length, and then click OK.
6.	Close the Local Group Policy Editor.

Building a Strong Password

If you just use your home network locally, the passwords you assign to each user account aren’t that important from a security point of view. Your goal should be to make them easy to remember and avoid those “I forgot my password!” tech support calls. The security landscape changes drastically when you add users to the Remote Desktop Users group, and thus enable them to connect to the network via the Internet. In this case, it’s crucial to supply remote users with strong passwords. Ideally, when you’re creating such a password, you want to pick one that that provides maximum protection without sacrificing convenience. Follow these guidelines when choosing a password:

Tip

The password guidelines I provide will ensure that your passwords exceed Windows Home Server’s password policy complexity minimums. For an extra challenge, submit the password (or, ideally, text that’s similar to your password) to an online password complexity checker. Microsoft runs such a checker at www.microsoft.com/protect/fraud/passwords/checker.aspx. You can also run a Google search on “password complexity checker” to see others.

• Use passwords that are at least eight characters long—Shorter passwords are susceptible to programs that try every letter combination. You can combine the 26 letters of the alphabet into about 12 million different five-letter word combinations, which is no big deal for a fast program. If you bump things up to eight-letter passwords, however, the total number of combinations rises to 200 billion, which would take even the fastest computer quite a while. If you use 12-letter passwords, as many experts recommend, the number of combinations goes beyond mind-boggling: 90 quadrillion, or 90,000 trillion!
  
  
• Mix up your character types—The secret to a strong password is including characters from the following categories: lowercase letters, uppercase letters, numbers, and symbols. If you include at least one character from three (or, even better, all four) of these categories, you’re well on your way to a strong password.
  
  
• Don’t be too obvious—Because forgetting a password is inconvenient, many people use meaningful words or numbers so that their password will be easier to remember. Unfortunately, this means that they often use extremely obvious things such as their name, the name of a family member or colleague, their birth date or Social Security number, or even their system username. Being this obvious is just asking for trouble.
  
  

Caution

After going to all this trouble to create an indestructible password, don’t blow it by writing it on a sticky note and then attaching it to your notebook keyboard! Even writing it on a piece of paper and then throwing the paper away is dangerous. Determined crackers have been known to go through a company’s trash looking for passwords. (This is known in the trade as dumpster diving.) Also, don’t use the password itself as your Windows 7, Vista, or XP password hint. Finally, if you’ve thought of a particularly clever password, don’t suddenly become unclever and tell someone. Your password should be stored in your head alongside all those “wasted youth” things you don’t want anyone to know about.

Changing the Password on the Client

If you already have a user account on the client computer, you might want to adjust the account password before adding the account to Windows Home Server. For example, if you’ll be accessing the network remotely with the account, you might want to specify a strong password when you set up the account in Windows Home Server. If you know the new password you want to use, it makes sense to update the client account with the new password in advance.

If you’re running Windows 7 or Vista on the client, or if you’re running XP with the Welcome screen disabled, follow these steps to change an account password:

1.	Log on to the account you want to modify.
2.	Press Ctrl+Alt+Delete.
3.	Click Change a Password. (Click Change Password in XP.)
4.	Type the old password in the appropriate box.
5.	Type the new password in the appropriate box, and then type it again in the Confirm Password text box. (It’s Confirm New Password in XP.)
6.	Press Enter. Windows changes the password.
7.	Click OK.

If your client is running XP with the Welcome screen enabled, follow these steps to change an account password:

1.	Log on to the account you want to modify.
2.	Select Start, Control Panel, User Accounts.
3.	Click the account you want to work with.
4.	Click Change My Password.
5.	Use the text boxes provided to type your old password, your new password (twice), as well as an optional password hint.
6.	Click Change Password.

Adding the User Account

Here are the steps to add an account to Windows Home Server:

1.	Launch the Windows Home Server Dashboard.
2.	Select the Users section.
3.	Click Add a User Account. The Add a User Account Wizard appears.
4.	Type the user’s first name and last name in the appropriate boxes. (The latter is optional.)
5.	Type the user’s account (that is, logon) name. Note The logon name can consist of only letters, numbers, spaces, periods (.), hyphens (-), or underscores (_). The name can’t end with a period, and you must use at least one letter or number. Also, the name must be unique among the Windows Home Server accounts.
6.	Type the password and then type it again in the Confirm Password text box. Keep an eye on the following items (see Figure 2): The Passwords Match— You see a check mark beside this item if you typed both passwords identically. The Passwords Must Be at Least X Characters Long— If the password meets or exceeds the length requirements specified by the Windows Home Server password policy, a check mark appears beside this item. You don’t see this item if you’re using the Weak password policy. The Password Must Meet Complexity Requirements— If the password meets or exceeds the complexity requirements specified by the password policy, a check mark appears beside this item. You don’t see this item if you’re using either the Weak or the Medium password policy. Figure 2. The password you enter must meet or exceed the length and complexity requirements of the current Windows Home Server password policy.
7.	Click Next. The Add a User Account Wizard prompts you to specify the user’s access to the shared folders (see Figure 3). Figure 3. You can give the new user Full Access, Read Only Access, or No Access to each shared folder.
8.	For each shared folder, use the list to select the option that corresponds to the access you want to give: Full Access, Read Only, or No Access.
9.	Click Next. The Add a User Account Wizard prompts you to specify the user’s remote web access permissions (see Figure 4). Figure 4. You can give the new user access to the network via the web, and you can specify the features the user can access.
10.	If you want to give the user remote web access, leave the Allow Remote Web Access option selected, and then activate the check box beside each feature that you want the user to access via the web. If, instead, you don’t want the user to be able to access the network over the web, select the Do Not Allow Remote Web Access option.
11.	Click Create Account. Windows Home Server adds the user account, sets the shared folder access, and creates a shared folder for the user. If you left the Allow Remote Access option activated, Windows Home Server adds the user to the appropriate security groups (such as RA_AllowShareAccess).
12.	Click Close. The account appears in the Windows Home Server Dashboard’s Users section, as shown in Figure 5. Figure 5. When you complete the wizard, the new account appears in the Windows Home Server Dashboard’s Users tab.

Note

Remember that you can add a maximum of 10 user accounts to Windows Home Server.