I lock the PC when I leave it unattended, but the lock screen has a GUI power button which my child likes to click when no-one's looking, so often I lose work. How can I disallow soft power cycling while the lock screen is up?
1 Answer
You can prevent any soft shutdown by disabling the Shutdown/Restart/Sleep/Hibernate options by updating the below local group policy, but you will have revert this settings when you really required the option to show in the Windows Start button.
Go to Run > gpedit.msc > User Configurations > Administrative Templates > Start Menu and Taskbar > choose "Remove and prevent access to the Shut Down, Restart, Sleep, and Hibernate commands" > click on 'Enabled' option. In order to take an immediate effect of this settings change, then open a command prompt and run the below command:
gpupdate /force
You need to revert the same settings in local group policy and run the "gpupdate /force" command to regain the Shutdown, Restart, Sleep and Hibernate options.
Hope this helps.
Windows 8.1 Professional