Xref: utzoo comp.windows.ms:7657 misc.kids:21384
Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!microsoft!philba
From: philba@microsoft.UUCP (Phil BARRETT)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.ms,misc.kids
Subject: Re: Problems with children using Windows3
Message-ID: <59465@microsoft.UUCP>
Date: 1 Dec 90 01:52:50 GMT
References: <719@retix.retix.COM> <126964@tiger.oxy.edu> <1990Nov20.065925.14745@ivucsb.sba.ca.us> <127690@tiger.oxy.edu>
Reply-To: philba@microsoft.UUCP (Phil BARRETT)
Organization: Microsoft Corp., Redmond WA
Lines: 30

In article <127690@tiger.oxy.edu> traiger@oxy.edu (Saul Traiger) writes:
>What a great idea! I tried this and it works. I made my son's group read
>only and then I tried deleting some apps from it. I got a dialogue box from
>Windows saying that I couldn't do that because the group was protected.
>Then I tried resizing the application group and exiting Windows with the
>save changes option. Again, Windows informed me that it wouldn't save my
>changes to the protected group.
>

In addition, you can create a `customized' installation of windows that
only gives the kid access to the various games and such and eliminates
the really dangerous ones (like file manager and maybe the dos prompt
and so on).  What you can do is set up a directory that contains only
the .grp files, various *.ini files and win.com.  Set up your machine
so that when you boot, it cd's to that directory and has the real
windows directory on the path (and if you like starts windows).  When
you start windows, it will use these ini & grp files rather than the
ones in your own configuration.  Then, configure the groups so there is
no file manager, setup, control panel, ... icons.  Then make the grp &
ini files read-only.  When you want to use the system, just CD out of
the kids directory and when you start windows, you get your version.

You can also use this trick to configure different versions for
different users.  This is essentially how you would set up windows on a
diskless workstation and I believe it is discussed in the networks.txt
file that shipped with the product.

phil
the above opinions are just mine and do not necessarily
represent those of my employer.