Consequences of changing a password in Windows

Question

I'm having 2 machines on my home network where I have the same account name but different passwords. I believe there should be advantages to having a single one (I hope :) but also think that changing it on one of the machines will do something - I'm just not sure what exactly. Will my stored passwords in IE and Chrome still work? Scheduled tasks? Etc.

I'm looking for a list of things that I should watch out for after I change the user password.

Answer 1

Changing your Windows password for an existing user account should affect nothing that you're concerned about.

The main thing you have to watch out for is services that may be set to login as the account you're about to change the password for. If there is any (usually there isn't) then you'll have to edit the service's login credentials (via services.msc) and enter the new password there as well.

Answer 2

You might have problems accessing the other machine.

With Workgroups Windows uses your credentials on "your" machine when accessing shared folders on the "other" machine. If you have the same account name but with different passwords you might not be able to access the "other" machine.

The best situation would be that you have to enter the "other" credentials every time you need to access the machine.