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I set up the parental controls on a standard user account in windows 7, so that the user could only run specific programs that were authorized. I then logged in to that account and tried to run several programs - nothing worked other than the ones I had disabled. Good so far.

However, then I tried to run regedit, and succeeded! Not only that, I could modify the registry!

Is this really an acceptable behaviour of a standard user account with all programs disabled? Why could I even run regedit.exe? I certainly didn't flag it as an exception to the "No programs allowed to run" rule. :(

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Yes, any user account can run regedit, but anything beyond HKEY_CURRENT_USER can't be modified. If you're using something as simple as Windows Parental controls to block stuff, I wouldn't think the blockee would know about, much less access, regedit. If not, you may want to play around with the security policy, or secpol.msc. This should help.

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Normal users cannot launch regedit.exe. I suspect the account isn't really a "standard user" as you claimed or you clicked through an elevation prompt without noticing.

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Windows says it's a "standard user", and yet I can run regedit and meddle with the registry on it. There are no elevation prompts to be found. :( – Colen Aug 1 '10 at 7:17
Have your UAC settings been changed? (Start menu search for "uac" and hit Enter) – Rafael Rivera Aug 1 '10 at 19:19
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