how to keep kids out of computer control panel

Personally, I would use limited user accounts for your kids, and set up Group Policy to block access to certain parts

How To Disable Control Panel in Windows 7 - How-To Geek

That way, you don't need to use any software you don't already have, and you don't install some horrible restrictive parental control software that will marr the experience of browsing the web. How old are your kids by the way? Any age above 12-13 it's probably a bad idea to apply parental controls on what they can browse on the internet. I don't believe in shielding children from what is essentially the real world.

Oh, and Assuming you're using Windows 7, this is the only time UAC is actually useful, because you can create limited accounts and give temporary admin access if you want to install something on their account for them, and it also prevents any malware they might contract from changing any settings without an admin password.
 
Hi darkseeker my kids are 13 10 and 6 my 6 year old is autistic and he is the little one going in to the control panel all time!! i have vista home pre (sucks i know lol) but can i disable control panel in vista just on the limted accout side? great idea!! It will def work if i can do this in vista thx alot!!

---------- Post added at 08:30 AM ---------- Previous post was at 08:28 AM ----------

do i have to do this from the admin side or the limted accout side?
 
You need to set up a password on your user account so your child cannot access the administrator account which would be your user account, you then need to turn on the guest account for your child to use. The guest account will allow use of the computer but no changes can be made to the computer.

Do the following to enable the guest account.

Start > Control Pannel > User Accounts > Manage another account > Click on "guest" then "Turn on".

Do the following to set up a password

Start > Control Pannel > User Accounts > Click on "Create password for your accont"

When you restart your computer you will be prompted to select a user account to log in with.

www.bluelineitsolutions.com
 
with the guest account the kid can still get to the control panel(unless i'm doing it wrong)

What kinds of settings are you worried about him changing? If you create a limited or guest account, even with access to the Control Panel it will only change settings for that account.
Also, another thought is that you could simply hide the Control Panel icon from the start menu. It will still be accessible from the search, but if he doesn't know about that then it should be fine. To hide it from the start menu, right click your Start button. Then click Properties. Then click the Start Menu tab. Click Customize. Then under the Control Panel section, choose the option "Don't display this item." You can hide almost anything else from that side of the start menu this same way also.

If you need to completely disable the control panel, the link from a previous post (How To Disable Control Panel in Windows 7 - How-To Geek) might actually work for you. Even though you stated you were on Home Premium, at the end of the post there is a method of adding a value to the registry. If you have modified the registry before, it will be no problem. However, if you don't even know what the registry is, I'd recommend either finding some other method or finding someone who is comfortable with it. Accidently changing the wrong setting in the registry can cause some serious problems with your computer. Also, this method is for Windows 7 so I'm not entirely sure how it will work on Vista (I'm assuming it should work because they are pretty similar).

If you decide to proceed with the registry method, I think you have to do it from the limited account (if you need admin privileges, I think you just have to type in your account's username and password in the UAC prompt). I haven't actually attempted this but based on the comments, doing it from the admin account just disabled it for that account, so it's safe to assume that you'd have to do it from the account you want it disabled for (in this case, the limited user account).
 
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