If you are using Windows 7 on a laptop, or on a desktop computer that is shared with other people (or used in location where other people could have access to that computer), password-protecting Windows is very important; even more important, especially for a traveling laptop that potentially contains sensitive information (or data that could be used to steal your identity), you need to create as strong a password as possible. In this tutorial, we will give you a few tips to come up with strong passwords.
Make a hard-to-guess password for your Windows 7 user account (profile)
Here are a few things to avoid if you want to have a strong password:
- Don't use something like "password", or a blank password (Windows 7 allows you to have a profile that is not password-protected, not something we recommend).
- Avoid any information that could be guess by someone who knows you, like the name of a pet, your spouse's first name, or your date of birth, anniversary, etc. One of these alone is a weak password, but as you'll see in the second section of this tutorial, combining them together into a single password will likely be a very difficult to guess password for Windows 7.
- Avoid using just numbers or just letters.
- Avoid using only uppercase or only lowercase letters.
- Don't use any word that is in the dictionary - most password hacking software packages will first trying to access Windows 7 with a word from a standard dictionary.
Find a tough password to protect your Windows 7 profile
Now that we've given you some pointers on what to avoid, here are a few suggestions, all of which will help you generate a very strong password that could well be hacker-proof:
- Every strong password mixes uppercase letters, lowercase letters, numbers, and a few symbols: this makes for extremely strong passwords that are not only hard to guess, but would also be very difficult to "reverse engineer" by someone watching your hands type that password inside the Windows 7 logon screen.
- The strongest passwords are also the hardest to remember: since a password is only useful if you can remember it, regardless of its strength, you need to come up with a "trick". Examples:
- Always start and end with an uppercase letter, or use a lowercase letter as first and last character - whichever you find easier to remember.
- Always include a symbol in the middle, at the end of the password, or at the beginning.
- Always use numbers in the same position inside your password (the beginning, the middle, or at the end of the password).
The point of having your own convention is that if you remember the order in which you enter letters, numbers, and symbols, and the position at which you use uppercase letters, you are on your way to having the strongest possible Windows 7 password! (Since in most cases, you'll remember which symbol, which series of numbers, and which "words" combine into your new password - the order is typically the most difficult aspect of remembering a password.)
Password & Security Tip: as you may already know from a previous tutorial, you can change password hint in Windows 7; if you have a strong password, but an easy-to-guess secret reminder, anyone will be able to access your Windows profile - so if you change your Windows 7 password to a stronger one, also make sure to pick a very obscure password hint (but clear for you!)
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