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How to Prevent Windows from Remembering Passwords

There are many reasons to prevent Windows from remembering passwords – these include..
 

A shared or public computer – giving a computer to a friend or family member or even selling a computer, in this case we would really recommend wiping the whole thing and reinstalling from scratch.

But the one point all these have in common is that using Windows remember password options is a big security risk, someone does not even have to steal your computer to get your passwords they could simply connect remotely if you have inadequate security and in effect browse your sites from your computer and then change your password while on the site.

The types of password that Windows remembers generally falls into two categories.

 
Internet browser based
Separate applications such as messenger clients Yahoo, MSN etc

Luckily these saved password are very easy to remove –

Internet Explorer – Tools menu – General tab. Delete – Then you have the option to delete any saved passwords.

Firefox – Tools – Options – Security tab – Saved Passwords under the password section.

Windows Based
To remove any passwords saved by Windows its just a case of going to My Computer – Control Panel – User Accounts – Advanced tab and manage passwords – Now you will be able to see any saved passwords.

 

These can include drive mappings which if set to persistent need to be disconnected, Right clicking on it and selecting disconnect, make sure no files are open prior to this.

Some other parts of Windows applications and services can also remember usernames and passwords.

To check if any services are using remembered connection preferences from the Start Run menu type Services.msc – Now under the Log On As heading we can see who is logged onto which service.

A common problem with Windows is the account lockout for no apparent reason a Windows account will lock – this generally happens if there is a policy in place and entering the wrong password 3 times will lock the account.

If there is a service which has remembered credentials using an old or out of date password it could easily lock the account it is trying to login as.

Read more on Account lockouts with our article ..

An easy way to remove many remembered passwords or prevent account lockouts is to delete the users profile – to do this restart the computer (not simply logout) then login as Administrator or another account with admin rights – then simply rename the profile of the account you wish to remove. Once you log back in it will create a new profile and you can copy across anything you wish to keep such as Internet Favorites – Files etc

prevent windows from remembering passwords - this is not the only security risk find out more about computer security.

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