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Do I need the Guest account in Windows 2000? Can I disable it?
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Petri IT Knowledgebase Team
The 'Guest' account allows anonymous access to a machine. Making sure that this account is disabled will prevent "others" from using services you may have left open by mistake.
Note: You might also be interested in Disable the Guest account in Windows XP.
You need to open Local Users and Groups snap-in in the Computer Management MMC (or run lusrmgr.msc from the Run menu).
Some people confuse the "Everyone" group with the guest account/group. "Everyone" represents ALL users that are authenticated in any way the client can verify, be this locally or via a Windows domain. If you are any user on the PC then you are a member of "Everyone". If a user doesn't have any other method of authentication, then access is allowed default to whatever the guest group/account has rights to. This is the reason that you should disable your guest account.
You can also use the NET USER command from the command prompt. To do so open a Command Prompt by running CMD.EXE.
Use the following syntax:
net user username /active:no
