Does a local computer have a built-in system account and a built-in local system account?

Question

Does a computer have a built-in system account and a built-in local system account? What's the difference between these two accounts?

Answer 1

Yes, there are multiple system accounts on any system.

On Windows, you have about a dozen or so, including:

• Administrator: The general global administrative account, usually disabled by default on modern systems.
• TrustedInstaller: Used by the Windows installer and Windows update frameworks, notably one of the few accounts who can create files that can't be manipulated by the Administrator account.
• Local System: Mostly used for services that operate on hardware.
• Local Service: Used for software services on the local computer that are not served over the network, most of them providing background handling for various Windows API's.
• Network Service: Used for services that are meant to be accessed over the networ).
• DefaultAccount: Used to store defaults for per-user settings.

Similarly, on UNIX systems, you generally have at least a few dozen 'system' accounts. Unlike Windows, the naming isn't consistently standardized (the only one that's pretty much always there is the root account, which is like the Windows Administrator account on steroids). As a general rule, unlike Windows, UNIX systems run each service as a separate user whenever possible, so there will generally be a dedicated account for every service the system provides.