How to Prevent Child Account to Shut Down Windows 8

Question

I am using Windows 8.1 and I have set a child account for my son. When he wants to use the computer, I switch to his child account without signing out from my account (because i have a lot of open documents that I still work on and don't want to close them yet). One day, when he finishes using the computer, he shut down the computer immediately. When the computer is shut down, I lose all of my open documents. It is a disaster indeed. Is there a way to disable child account's power button at the charm bar or at least to disallow shut down if other accounts are still on?

Answer 1

Solution

There are different ways to shutdown the system, so you have to take that into account in order to avoid the issue entirely.

Preliminary steps

1. Make sure the user accounts you want to restrict are logged off.
2. Log on with an administrator account, and open an elevated command prompt.

Disable all shutdown buttons and menus for a specific user

1. Type or paste the following command in the command prompt by replacing <User> with the actual folder, then press Enter:

   reg load "HKU\User" "%SystemDrive%\Users\<User>\NTUSER.DAT"
   

2. Execute the commands below:

   reg add "HKU\User\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer" /v "NoClose" /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f
   reg unload "HKU\User"
   

3. Repeat steps 1-2 for any other user you want to limit.

Revoke shutdown privileges assigned to standard users

1. Download the Windows Server 2003 Resource Kit Tools.

2. Extract the rktools.exe downloaded file using 7-Zip.

3. Open the folder containing the extracted files, and extract the rktools.msi through 7-Zip. Among all the files there's one called ntrights.exe.

4. Navigate to the folder containing ntrights.exe by running the commands below after replacing the folder path inside quotes:

   cd /d "X:\Some\folder"
   ntrights.exe -u Users -r SeShutdownPrivilege
   ntrights.exe -u Users -r SeRemoteShutdownPrivilege        
   

Remove shutdown button on the logon screen

Execute this command:

reg add "HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System" /v "ShutdownWithoutLogon" /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f

References

• Command Prompt: frequently asked questions
• reg - Command-Line Reference
• NTrights - User Privileges | SS64.com
• Remove and prevent access to the Shut Down, Restart, Sleep, and Hibernate commands
• Shut down the system - User Rights Assignment
• Shutdown: Allow system to be shut down without having to log on

Answer 2

Try the following.

1. Press + R and put gpedit.msc in Run dialog box. Press Enter.
2. In Group Policy window will pop up from which choose User Configuration - Administrative Templates - Start Menu & Taskbar from the Left Panel as shown below. .
3. Now on the Right Panel, double-click on Remove And Prevent Access To Shut Down Command.
4. A pop will appear set it to Enabled. Then you’ll notice that this will remove the shutdown option from the Start Menu and security dialog box.