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How to Make Password Mandatory for All User Accounts in Windows 7?

By Codrut Nistor

Posted in How-to, Windows-7

As you might have seen in almost all account registration processes providing password is mandatory thing without which an account cannot be created. Although in Windows 7 any user account that is created can be without any password however this feature can be modified and providing password for all users can be configured to be a mandatory process. Moreover the password that a user will provide should also be a complex password. With the help of this configuration the user cannot provide a simple password and/or cannot leave the password blank.

To make this happen you need to follow the below steps:

  1. Click on "Start" button.

  2. At the bottom of the list in the "Search Box" type "gpedit.msc" and press enter key.

  3. From the "Local Computer Policy" snap-in under "Computer Configuration" expand "Windows Settings".

  4. From "Windows Settings" tree expand "Security Setting".

  5. Then expand "Account Policies" and select "Password Policies".

  6. From the right pane double-click on "Password Must Meet Complexity Requirements".

  7. On "Password Must Meet Complexity Requirements Properties" page select "Enabled".

  8. Press "Ok" button on all the vendors to accept and confirm your selections.

  9. Create a new user account and try to leave the password field blank while creating. You will get an error message telling that your password does not meet requirements.

Guidelines for a complex password:

Complex password means that a password must have minimum of 7 characters having the combination of any three of the following four options:

  1. Special characters. For example: ! @ # $ % ^
  2. characters with upper cases. For example: A R G S R E
  3. Characters with lower cases. For example: a g w t e
  4. Numerical digits. For example: 123456

An example for a complex password can be: c0mP1@x