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Windows Home Server doesn't interfere with the user accounts already set up on the PCs in your home or office network. If you put Administrator accounts with godlike capabilities and no passwords on all your PCs, WHS won't lift a finger to stop you. (But it's a really bad idea.)
WHS looks out for number one — for the Windows Home Server box itself. If you want to get into the server, you have to follow the server's rules. If you want to do anything else on the network, well, that isn't the server's responsibility.
Windows Home Server gets into the account-and-password-control mess in three ways:
- Anybody who wants to read from or write to shared folders on the server has to be given explicit permission.
- Anybody who wants to log on to your network from the Internet, using Remote Access, has to be given explicit permission.
- In a very roundabout way, you can tell WHS to sync the password on the server with the password on each home or office computer.
 | In all other respects, WHS doesn't interfere with user accounts or passwords, sharing settings, the type of account you set up (Administrator or Limited under Windows XP; Administrator or Standard under Vista), or any other account or password details — on any of your home or office computers. It turns a completely blind eye to anything you want to do. |
Almost everyone, almost everywhere, calls a user name a "user name." (Or maybe a "username," but you get the idea.) Confusingly, Windows Home Server insists on calling a user name a "logon name." Windows Vista calls the same thing a "user account name." Windows XP calls it a "user name." Don't be confused. "Logon name," "logon ID," "login name," "user name," "user account name," and "username" all refer to the same thing — the name on the account, the name you click on the Welcome screen to get into the computer.
Windows Home Server lets you set up a maximum of ten different user names, er, logon names. In addition, there are always two special accounts called Administrator and Guest.
It's best to use precisely the same user names on the server as you have on each of your home or office PCs, and it's best to make sure the passwords on the server match passwords on the home or office PCs. So, for example, if one of your PCs has a user named JensenA with a password of i8MyPC, you should also put a user named JensenA with the same password on the server.
Okay, that isn't a requirement — Windows Home Server won't fall over dead if there's a user name on a PC that isn't set up on the server. But it makes your life (and JensenA's life) much easier in myriad ways. For example, if the password on the home or office PC matches the password on the server, then JensenA won't have to type a new password every time he tries to get into a shared folder on the server.
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