Lockdown/limit access on laptop for kids use?

Draeger

Draeger

Draeger

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Joined
4 Feb 2004
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Écosse
Hi all,

I've acquired a little Panasonic Toughbook from a friend who bought a new laptop. They were just going to bin the Toughbook but it was in perfect working order so offered it to me to see if I could make any use of it. As its a Toughbook its a bit more resilient to knocks, drops and spillages than an 'ordinary' laptop and therefore I thought it would make a nice extra surprise crimbo pressie for our little lad who is nearly 4. He knows his way around our Android tablet and has his own iPhone 3G (with no SIM - just has games and movies on it for him to play :cool:) and at his nursery they are given sessions on using a laptop and desktop PC to play games and use educational software.

Anyway, what I was wondering is this - Is there any way within Windows to 'lock down' the O/S and prevent him from accessing things he shouldn't be? I'm aware of parental control software for net access like K9 and Netnanny etc but he won't be going online with it unless he is 100% supervised and I plan on installing K9 anyway. What I mean is can I limit the access he has to the actual O/S so he can't inadvertently access and delete things from the C:/ drive, change settings etc? I wiped the laptop when we got it and installed Windows 7 which seems to be whizzing along quite happily just now, is there a way to perhaps create a new user account and apply restrictions to it or is there third party software of some sort which can 'lock down' the laptop in a similar manner?

Thanks in advance for any suggestions. :)
 
i don't have much dealings with user controls etc but i found this link.

http://www.gcflearnfree.org/windows7/5/print

if scroll down there is a section about "Using Parental Controls" in windows 7 which allows you to limit programs they use and other options. might be worth a read when you get some time, sorry i cant be much more help
 
Cheers, I'll have a browse. Seems to be loads of info online regards internet restriction software and methods but very little on preventing inquiring little minds mucking around with system settings!
 
If it's Windows 7 Pro or above you can use Group Policy to restrict access to things like the C drive (or at least just hide it in Computer).
Failing that, FreshUI will give a subset of these options - it needs to be registered but is free.
 
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