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Any way to limit computer use to single application?

A

archcommus

Diamond Member
I'm going to be having a party and want to use my computer for music. I want it to be unlocked and have Winamp up so people can change what's playing themselves, but I'd like to have it so Winamp is full screen and you can't take focus from it, or at the very least have it so IE and any folders can't be opened. Is there any way to do this?

Thanks.
 
There are easier ways and there are harder ways... It depends on what OS you're running.

If you're running a "Pro" or "Business" or "Ultimate" OS there's a software restriction policy and group policy stuff you can use to lock it down pretty well if you're careful.
http://www.mechbgon.com/srp/index.html

You can't as easily use that with a "Home" type OS because we all know that Home users having wild parties don't need computer security or anything... thanks Micro$oft.

I think there might be some kinds of 'Parental Controls' type things in some OSes.. not sure about XP or if it's just Vista or what.... that might help.

Keep in mind you'll have to lock out booting from floppy, USB flash drive, CD, etc. You'll also have to completely disable "AUTORUN" for floppies, CD, USB drives, iPods, digital cameras, etc. etc. or you'll be infected and 0wn3d by the first thing someone plugs into your PC that has a virus or hacking tool on it.

You should create a new LIMITED permissions account for the party and then if you can't do the registry hacks to set up software restriction, at least do the hacks that prevent dos command shells, loading internet explorer, using windows explorer, etc.
http://www.jsifaq.com/
has some info on security related registry hacks for that stuff.

I am sure there is some "parental control" type lock out software that you can find but who knows how secure it is or whether it'll permit unrestricted winamp access or if it's free or not.....

You might consider just booting from a BartPE CD or better yet a Linux LIVE-CD and mapping the shared music files you have so they can be accessed by a media player but nothing else in terms of the files on your hard disc is easily accessed. But you probably have to know a fair bit about sysadmin to do these things....

Or if you have a spare drive... just copy the music to it, install XP or whatever on it temporarily, UNPLUG the real main hard disc, use the 2nd drive for the party, format it afterward....

 
How about printing out a catalog and having people fill out a Playlist request? Like a Karaoke Bar. Give one trusted guest a limited account password (or do it yourself yourself) and add the requested music to the playlist.

This will save you a LOT of effort over trying to do what you're asking for. That seems like a lot of work for a single event.
 
Windows SteadyState might be an option, if it's WinXP. I keep meaning to try this out sometime. I imagine you'd begin by creating a separate Limited account and lock down from there. Might play with it tomorrow.
 
Thanks. I'm running Vista Ultimate. The Guest account seems like a good place to start. It will lock them out of my personal shell folders and anything else that requires admin permission. I don't have to worry about booting from USB, etc., as it's a pretty personal party and I know everyone pretty well, no one will be attempting that. I would like to prevent web browsing, though. Could a software restriction policy help with that? Parental controls could probably do it, but they cannot be applied to the Guest account apparently, so I'd have to make a separate account to use them. I'd like to avoid any registry stuff for something this simple if possible.

Getting some requests and making a playlist myself is what I'll probably do if I can't get this set up relatively easily. Shouldn't be too hard though.

SteadyState is only for XP? Or are you saying I'd only need to consider it if I had XP.

Also, mechBgon, a side question: I know you always push standard accounts. With Vista and all UAC stuff on, do you see any problem with running an admin account daily?
 
Microsoft also has tech articles describing how to set up "Kiosk PCs", which are what you are trying to do. I don't know if these are available for Vista. You can search for "kiosk" on Microsoft's site.
 
Originally posted by: JonnyBlaze
just kill the explorer.exe process after you have winamp running
Click to expand...

ACTUALLY, lol, that's not that bad of a suggestion. True, it's easily circumvented, but I know there will be only one, maybe two people at the party that would know what to do to reopen it. If I could just make it so that starting a new task or opening Task Manager required admin credentials this would be a perfect and very easy solution. Don't think I can do that, though. Even without that this really isn't a bad idea. I'd still use the Guest account so just in case someone does reopen explorer they still won't be able to get to my files, but killing explorer would be a pretty easy way to prevent most or all IE access.
 
If it were me, considering you have a version of Vista that features Parental Controls, I'd set up a Standard (non-Administrator) account for this purpose and apply Parental Controls to it. You can blow away the account when you're done. Check your file/folder/drive visibility from the account in question to ensure it's meeting your goals.
 
You mentioned not being able to restrict the guest account in a certain way due to inbuilt limits or something...

Why don't you just create another 'guests' or 'party' account or whatever and then limit that? It takes 5 seconds in control panel / Users. You can delete it later.

Also if you don't want them going online, just pull the internet network cable and roll it up / put it away. That'll prevent anyone but the most l33t haxx0r from getting online lol.

You could also go into the devices list for the PC network adapters and just right click on your modem / network card or whatever you get internet through and select "DISABLE". It's easy enough to re-enable though you might need to type in the network settings / key again at that point. Once it is disabled a non-admin user cannot re-enable it AFAIK.

You should be able to do the software restriction stuff no problem on vista ultimate, and I don't think that needs registry hacking, use mech's tutorial. I'd imagine you can do a lot just with user friendly control panel utilities, MMC, etc.

You can also use the filesystem security stuff to lock the visitors account out of most places in the filesystem easily enough... just Visitors -> Deny read,write,modify,execute, etc.

 
Originally posted by: archcommus
Also, mechBgon, a side question: I know you always push standard accounts. With Vista and all UAC stuff on, do you see any problem with running an admin account daily?
Click to expand...

Actually, kinda the point of having UAC enabled is that it essentially lowers your permissions to standard user even if you have an admin account. Your access is elevated only when you need to initiate something that requires admin access and that's where the UAC prompts come in.
 
Originally posted by: archcommus
Also, mechBgon, a side question: I know you always push standard accounts. With Vista and all UAC stuff on, do you see any problem with running an admin account daily?
Click to expand...

Ooops, I missed that part. Like nerp says, if UAC is enabled, it's certainly lower in risk to be an Admin on Vista than it is on WinXP. I still have a couple reasons I'd stick with a Standard account, and one of them is simply that if you use a Standard account, someone who jumps onto your computer while you're not around won't have easy access to the Admin powers.

I guess you could look at it either way. There's less reason to be a non-Admin in Vista. On the other hand, there's a lot less reason not to be a non-Admin in Vista. I'll stick with non-Admin.
 
Thanks. I'll probably just create a new account with some parental controls applied as suggested. I changed security permissions on my documents partition so only me and admins can access it.

mechBgon, I see what you're saying, however I'd have to disagree that there is very little reason not to be a non-Admin in Vista. Having to type a full password instead of just clicking OK every time something requires consent would be a gigantic pain. I think if you're the sole user of your computer, running an Admin account that is always locked when not in use with UAC enabled is fine. If you have multiple users, just make sure to always log off, and that everyone else is a standard user.

Obviously you already knew this, just giving my opinion. 😉
 
Originally posted by: archcommus
Thanks. I'll probably just create a new account with some parental controls applied as suggested. I changed security permissions on my documents partition so only me and admins can access it.

mechBgon, I see what you're saying, however I'd have to disagree that there is very little reason not to be a non-Admin in Vista. Having to type a full password instead of just clicking OK every time something requires consent would be a gigantic pain.
Click to expand...

Compared to running Win2000 or WinXP at this level of security, I think Vista's UAC system is like having a red carpet rolled out everywhere I go, passwords and all 🙂 Different strokes for different folks, I guess.
 
Originally posted by: Peter
What you're trying to do is called "kiosk mode" in Windows. Google it.
Click to expand...

Is there actually a mode like that though? I've heard many requests for something like that, but have never seen an actual implementation of a kiosk mode on a consumer desktop version of Windows.
 
Originally posted by: VirtualLarry
Originally posted by: Peter
What you're trying to do is called "kiosk mode" in Windows. Google it.
Click to expand...

Is there actually a mode like that though? I've heard many requests for something like that, but have never seen an actual implementation of a kiosk mode on a consumer desktop version of Windows.
Click to expand...

How did you read "google it" as "keep pestering me"? 😉

Really, there appears to be a downloadable toolkit for MS that lets you do various things - amongst it that single-app mode you're looking for.
 
Originally posted by: Peter
Originally posted by: VirtualLarry
Originally posted by: Peter
What you're trying to do is called "kiosk mode" in Windows. Google it.
Click to expand...

Is there actually a mode like that though? I've heard many requests for something like that, but have never seen an actual implementation of a kiosk mode on a consumer desktop version of Windows.
Click to expand...

How did you read "google it" as "keep pestering me"? 😉

Really, there appears to be a downloadable toolkit for MS that lets you do various things - amongst it that single-app mode you're looking for.
Click to expand...

I did Google it, notice that was not me who asked that question lol. Thanks for your suggestion.

Originally posted by: Canterwood
Vista Ultimate has a backup feature where you can make an image of the OS.

Might be an idea to do that just in case.
Click to expand...

Thanks for mentioning that, that looks interesting for a totally different reason, getting a new hard drive soon. Can I use that to back up an image and then restore that image to a bigger partition on a fresh drive? The partition to back up is 55.8 GB, about 32 used. Probably would be restoring to a 200 GB partition of a 500 GB drive.
 
Heh, I knew it wasn't you, that's why I put the quote in. Relax 😉

With your backup/restore plan, you will find that XP SP2 remembers its system drive by name - so even though you're copying the entire contents of it, it won't boot afterwards. You'll need to edit the registry to change its mind about which one is the boot drive, literally. I've done this successfully as follows:

* Copy the partition, old to new.
* Keep both drives online, change boot order to the new drive
* XP will fire up, but still using the old drive's system files - but the registry from the new drive.
* Now edit the registry ("DOS drive names" or somesuch, can't remember) and swap the drive letters for old and new in there
* Reboot
* All sorted.
 
Cloning a drive works a lot easier if you do the clone, and then REMOVE the orignal HD, and put the cloned drive in it's place, and then boot. As long as the partitions are in the same order, they should be re-assigned the same drive letters. At least as far as I've seen, as long as you don't have some wierdo drive letters for the system drive. It seems a lot easier than editing the registry to me. I've had issues when booting the system with the original and cloned drive installed, and Windows uses some files from one drive and some files from another. It turns into a mess.
 
I just did the image restore from a 120 GB PATA disk to a 500 GB SATA disk using Vista's built-in software with no problem. Thanks everyone.

As far as the party this Friday goes, I'll probably just use a Guest account (to prevent document access) with a killed Explorer process and Winamp maximized. Should work well enough.
 
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