CertiGuide to A+ (A+ 4 Real)  9  Chapter 1: What are Operating Systems and How Do They Work?       9  System Configuration Tools            9  Local Users and Groups

Managing User Groups 1 Disk Management

To view the members of a group, double click it. Figure 129 shows the members of the local Administrators group.

In this case, the machine is a member of the HK Windows domain. As well as the local Administrator account, the HK Domain Administrators group is a member of the local Administrators group, giving them complete control over the machine. To add a user to the group, click the “Add” button and select them from the list that appears.

When doing so, an interesting anomaly occurs. Take a close look at the available groups and user accounts listed in the “Select Users or Groups” window (Figure 130).

These items clearly are not in the Local Users and Groups management snap-in, so what are they? These are actually “virtual” groups, known as “BUILTIN” groups. They cannot have members manually assigned to them as they are used by Windows to manage specific situations. As an example, it is extremely hard to allow all users of a computer access to a specific file. You could add all the current user accounts to a group and then grant that group access to the file, but that will not automatically allow access to users created in a few weeks time. This is where the “Everyone” group comes in – giving the “Everyone” group permissions to the file ensures that all users of the computer (both present and future, not-yet-created ones) will have access. The other groups are similar in purpose, but used for different things. For example, the “TERMINAL SERVICE USER” group has users added to it dynamically when they connect to the computer via Terminal Services, and removed again when they disconnect.

Managing User Groups 1 Disk Management