MCSA/MCSE Self-Paced Training Kit (Exam 70-270): Installing ...

7-36 Chapter 7 Setting Up and Managing User Accounts
Lesson 5: Implementing Groups
In this lesson, you will learn what groups are and how you can use them to simplify
user account administration. You will also learn about built-in groups, which have a
predetermined set of user rights and group membership, and about special groups,
which you cannot add members to yourself but for which Windows creates memberships
dynamically. Windows XP Professional has two categories of built-in groups,
local and system, which it creates for you to simplify the process of assigning rights and
permissions for commonly used functions.
After this lesson, you will be able to
■ Explain the purpose of a group
■ Identify guidelines for using local groups
■ Create a local group
■ Add members to a local group
■ Delete a local group
■ Identify the built-in local groups
■ Identify the built-in system groups
Estimated lesson time: 40 minutes
What Is a Group?
A group is a collection of user accounts. Groups simplify administration by allowing
you to assign permissions and rights to a group of users rather than to each user
account individually (shown in Figure 7-10).
Permissions control what users can do with a resource such as a folder, a file, or a
printer. When you assign permissions, you allow users to gain access to a resource and
you define the type of access that they have. For example, if several users need to read
the same file, you can add their user accounts to a group and then give the group permission
to read the file. Rights allow users to perform system tasks, such as changing
the time on a computer and backing up or restoring files.
See Also For more information about permissions, see Chapter 8, “Securing Resources
with NTFS Permissions.” For more information about rights, see Chapter 16.