Locking people out the control panel

CreepyPirate · **Posted:** June 12th, 2010, 9:26 am

Right ok. Vista is a load of ******* and my sisters boyfriend has an annoying habit of coming onto my computer and fiddling about with ****.

Obviously i don't want crap installed on my computer and i don't want him fiddling about with stuff either. Both of which he has done. So short of punching him in the nose - which I've been told i can't do "or else" i want him locked out of the control panel. I should point out he goes through my sisters account so locking him out completely would mean locking her out completely which would result in a lot of moaning in my ear.

But back to the point vista is *******. And despite the useless load of **** asking me to OK stuff i don't care about and everyone going on about how it's too protective or whatever i can't seem to lock one fat idiot who's outstayed his welcome out of my control panel.

So i ask for help of you tech savvy brainiacs.

I want a password on my control panel or a lock out from anyone but admins you know..something. Surely they have something for this i can't be the first person in the world with a giant ape assaulting his computer.

Adbot · **Posted:** June 12th, 2010, 9:26 am

Southrend · **Posted:** June 12th, 2010, 10:07 am

You might want to look into this:

http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/12104 ... -enable-disable.html

I'm not sure if it will stop shortcuts such as [left alt]+[shift]+[print screen] for example.

Earth · **Posted:** June 12th, 2010, 12:05 pm

Can't you just "downgrade" his account to a normal non-admin account?

Evelyn · **Posted:** June 12th, 2010, 12:35 pm

Password both your sister's and your account and remind her to lock or shutdown before leaving the computer.
You might as well kick her boyfriend off the computer entirely if he keeps **** with it.

Aquw VettelS 776 · **Posted:** June 12th, 2010, 5:00 pm

I hope I've understood your query correctly, but if not, I apologise in advance. Since their is no native method in Vista that I know of password-protecting the control panel, and I'm assuming your sister wouldn't be too happy if you locked her out of the control panel, may I suggest simply the guest account?

Without reading it in-depth, I think Southrend's method involved totally locking your sister's account out of the control panel. But am I correct in thinking you want to allow the boyfriend to use the computer, just not mess things up? By using the guest account you allow the boyfriend to use the computer with extremely limited access (it blocks him from the control panel, all user documents and files, and doesn't let him install/unintsall anything). So long as your sister, as Cliff said, ensures she logs off/shuts down, this should solve your problems, right?

Earth wrote:

Can't you just "downgrade" his account to a normal non-admin account?

You can still get to the control panel as a "normal user". P.S. Congrats on becoming dragon

Duke Juker · RSBandB Donor since 07/01/2010

Earth wrote:

Can't you just "downgrade" his account to a normal non-admin account?

This is probably the best solution. Give him his own (guest) account without admin powers that won't affect your settings and what not. You can always remove it later no problem and keep him from getting into your stuff. Otherwise, I wouldn't even let him on the computer anyway. I hate it when people want to use my computer for any reason. Glad I now have both a desktop and a laptop so I can switch between the two, but still. Not fun the share technology if you don't have to.

Adbot · **Posted:** June 13th, 2010, 12:30 am

Chief Snake · **Posted:** June 14th, 2010, 2:24 am

Southrend's tutorial should work for you. I use a similar registry hack to *enable* the control panel on school computers. 8-[

Code:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer]
"NoControlPanel"=dword:00000001

If you were to paste that into Notepad and save it as a .reg file, then run it, it would disable access to the control panel (as Southrend's tutorial shows). It applies to the current user only, so if you run that in your sister's account she is rendered control panel-less. You can get it back at any time by running the same file except replacing "dword:00000001" with "dword:00000000". That should be all there is to it.

CreepyPirate · **Posted:** June 14th, 2010, 3:15 am

Thank you all for your help.

Love you all.

This can be locked now.