▷ What are and how to manage credentials windows 10

Perhaps it tends to be quite uninteresting to you that Windows 10 credentials are, but the truth is that it is quite useful, especially for users of office equipment and networks within their work. That is why today we will see what Windows 10 credentials are and where we must access to modify them (if we can) or manage them.

Index of contents

If we want to have even more control over our operating system, the issue of credentials will be of interest to many users. Thanks to them, we can manage the users and passwords that we have stored in our operating system. Let's see a little more about these

What are Windows 10 credentials

Despite the fact that the word is quite strange, a credential is basically a username and accompanying password, a user certificate, or any form or method of authentication to access a resource on the computer, such as an application or a Web page.

These credentials or users and passwords, have special relevance in the business environment. This is because in a network where several hundred computers are connected, there is usually a credential server such as Active Directory or LDAP whose function is to manage access permissions to all configured resources of computers, file servers, printers, mails etc. In this way, if a user registers with a certain credential, they will have access to the resources that they have configured as visible and accessible.

Reducing this to our home environment, our team also stores our credentials about the sites where we have accessed and credentials of certain applications that need a username and password for access.

Where is the Windows 10 credential manager

Once we know what the credentials are, we have to access them in our system.

• We must go to the start menu and open it. Inside it, what we have to do is write " Credentials ". Automatically a search result will be displayed with the name " Credentials Manager " Click on this result to access the credentials management window

• Another way to access it will be through the Windows Control Panel. We open start and write " Control Panel " and press Enter Inside the window we change the view to icons to identify the desired option Just in the second icon in the list we will have " Credential Manager " click to access it.

In either case, we will access a window where we will see two icons:

• Web credentials: This option is available from Windows 8 version. Here the credentials or user accounts and password of the web pages that we access in the Egde and Internet Explorer browsers will be stored. You will notice that, if you use another browser, this section is completely empty since the other browsers do not manage their credentials in the Windows store. Windows credentials: this section will store passwords and users, certificates or other forms of authentication for Windows applications and systems.

Manage Windows 10 credentials

Let's look at an example of how a credential is stored in this store. We will try to access a computer from our home network.

• When we try to access it will ask for the username and password of the other user to be able to access it. When we put the credentials we are going to click on " Remember my credentials "

Now we will immediately go to the credentials configuration window. We will see that a line has been created (we have several other accesses) with the username and password, in addition to the IP address of the computer that we have accessed.

If we now click on it to see its content. We see that we have the IP address of the equipment, the user and the password that you have previously requested.

Having this credential stored, we will no longer need to retype username and password every time we access this equipment.

Add a credential

We can also directly add a credential before the access procedure asks for it. For this we will click on " Add Windows credential"

Now a window will appear where basically we will have to put the IP address or name of the computer we want to access, the user and the password.

To put an Active Directory domain we will have to write “*.domainname”

When we have everything correct, click on accept and the credential will be entered in the warehouse.

Delete credential

In the same way that we have entered a credential, we can also delete it. All we have to do is click on the arrow on the right and the information will open. Right below we will have an " Edit " button and another " Remove " button. If we press the credential it will be deleted.

Web credentials

If we have accessed from Microsoft Edge or Internet Browse to a web page and we have stored the credentials, these will appear in the " Web Credentials " section.

In this case, we can only delete the credentials that have been stored.

Back up the credential store

As you may have already noticed, we also have an option to back up all the data that we have entered here. This is especially useful if we reinstall our team or go to a different team. Having a backup we can restore the values ​​on the current computer, or another one. Let's see the process:

• Click on the option “ Backup credentials ”

• The first thing will be to choose the directory where we want to make the backup

• Now we click on "Next" and on the next screen it will ask us to press the key combination " Ctrl + Alt + Del " to continue the process. A window will immediately appear in which we must enter a password for the file that will be generated. In this way, you will be protected against access by other users or programs. The next thing to do is click " Next " and then " Finish ". The copy will be made.

We will create a file with the extension ".crd " that we can take with us to another team if we want.

To restore the credentials with a backup we will have to click on the button " Restore credentials " and in this way we will do the reverse process to the previous one.

Where credentials are physically stored

To finish we have also seen interesting knowing where the credentials are stored in our team:

Press the key combination " Windows + R " to open the Run tool

Now we write the following path:

Press Enter to access and we will see that the trunk is made up of two data directories. These directories and their contents are encrypted, so it is not worth copying and pasting them to another computer because it will not do any good. For that there is already the option to create a backup.

This is all we need to know about Windows 10 credentials.

We also recommend:

You can now delete or modify credentials in your operating system. For what purpose did you enter this tutorial? Leave us in the comments