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I have a number of kids games that only work on Windows 9x. Therefore, I have installed Windows 98 on an old computer to my children. The children are 5 and 2 years old. The problem I have is that the children click on everything they see and I have to constantly reset the computer.

So I want to lock the computer so that they can not do anything other than to start their games. It should be as easy as possible for them. Do you have tips for me to do?

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  • +1 for resurrecting a w98 box for the kids to play games.
    – Moab
    Jan 25, 2012 at 2:46
  • I'd recommend Microsoft Bob. Seriously, I'm not kidding.
    – gparyani
    Jun 22, 2014 at 22:29

1 Answer 1

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If I recall correctly, there's a registry entry somewhere under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersionthat contains "explorer" and actually tells Windows to start the explorer.exe process (which provides the taskbar).

If you replace it with something else, the user shell is replaced, and the user's access to the usual items (my computer, control panel) is restricted. If you have access to a programming environment, you could create a 'dashboard' that only allows to start the applications you describe. If you know HTML, you could try making a plain HTML page, and start it with iexplore.exe with the /k option which also restricts access to the usual interface of Internet Explorer (kiosk mode) (not sure if you're allowed to start exe files from a HTML link, though...)

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  • Good idea. Now the memories back that I was experimenting with replacing explorer.exe. I am a systems developer, so there is no problem to write an HTML page that solves it for me :-) Thanks for the reminder
    – magol
    Jan 24, 2012 at 22:15

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