is there any way to prevent this kid from installing games?

[yukichigai]

Originally posted by: labgeek
BIOS power on password?

Edit- if it doesn't have that option. Computer Geeks has a device you might want to look at: HDD Security + Front Mounted USB, Firewire and Sound Ports It has a cool feature of encryption with authentication keys. They might be able to get into the reward system with the kid. Get an A on a tes, get the keys to the computer for an hour or something. His friends aren't likely to have one of the authentication keys to borrow.

Hear hear, this is by far the best idea I've heard yet as far as ease of implimentation and effectiveness goes. There's a lot of ways you could do this. You could buy a smaller hard drive and install the OS and non-game software on that drive separately, then put the drive with all the goodies on a separate IDE channel through the encryption add-on. If you locked the case closed with some sort of security device you could even put the CD-Rom drive on the encrypted channel as well, though I don't know if that would work as you'd want.

Anyway dude, please get back to us on the reasons behind this. It's driving me nuts.

 

[GigaCluster]

I recommend Deep Freeze -- it allows 100% unrestricted computer usage, but as soon as the computer is restarted, ALL modifications to the filesystem are fully reversed. During installation this software can also be made to forcefully restart the computer daily or even hourly... so the kid would have to reinstall his games after every reboot, plus any configuration/saved game files would be lost every time. This software also allows an unrestricted "thawspace" to which anyone can save files which would not be erased after every reboot... but you can limit that space to 1 MB, 8 MB, 128 MB, whatever you want.

You could also couple that with software that monitors window titles or a certain directory, and upon triggering, reboots the computer... (*shrug*)

 

[dpopiz]

speed01: the mmc can do this? how? does anybody else know how well this aproach works?

 

[Oakenfold]

You need to be able to prevent this kid from installing any programs.
There is no reason he should be installing anything without his parent's supervision.
Create an account for him.

 

[lobadobadingdong]

don't they have usb keys that can lock you out of the os if you don't have the key plugged in?

oh! wait! how about a retinal eye scanner?

seriosly though the usb keys are relitivly inexpensive if you can't use the bios password option.

 

[skace]

If this is win2k better, use the MMC and make some hardcore secedit rules. With group / user policies you can set permissions PER FILE on the entire hard drive and it will check to make sure these permissions stay. We have some NT machines at work that are locked down so hard that you can't even get to explorer from certain accounts. These arn't easy to setup.

I like the better ideas of giving the kid something better to do. The best way to steal a kids attention is find what he likes to do and get him interested in it. If the absolute only thing that he likes to do is on his computer, at least teach him how to use it and how to program.

On a last note, only 2 hours a day? WEAK!

 

[Speedy3D!]

2 hours per weekday? I really don't see what is wrong with that as long as it isn't affecting anything else in his life like friends/schoolwork. I'm surprised that is all the time he spends, especially if neither of his parents interact with him.

Playing video games is much better than sitting and watching TV, which is probably what he would do if he can't play anyway.

Anyway, just give him user level access and prevent him from installing anything. If he needs to install something his parents can do it.

 

[SnowBoarder9455]

send him on a christian retreat, seriously my (gamer) friend went on one and gave up video games completly, even though he just bought a 3.06 ghz machine to play them on.

 

[Glitchny]

Originally posted by: SnowBoarder9455
send him on a christian retreat, seriously my (gamer) friend went on one and gave up video games completly, even though he just bought a 3.06 ghz machine to play them on.

your friend is either retarded or an anomoly

what is the reason that this kid cant play games? we still dont know

 

[yukichigai]

Originally posted by: SnowBoarder9455
send him on a christian retreat, seriously my (gamer) friend went on one and gave up video games completly, even though he just bought a 3.06 ghz machine to play them on.

I've been on one of those. They stopped just short of saying that playing video games was like eating babies; a lot of fire and brimstone stuff. Sure, go ahead and send the kid off to a Christian retreat like that, but I ain't paying for the therapy he's gonna need because of it.

dpopiz: would you please explain the situation to us a little more clearly? We'd like to know whether or not this kid needs something more or less drastic than no access to the computer.

 

[skace]

SnowBoarder9455 == sarcasm

 

[jjyiz28]

eh, just skimmed through the resposes. only an administrator account can install anything i believe, therefore set up that kid to use another account, like user, and set up a password for the admin account.