I have a gaming PC with win10 Home. I have set up two family accounts for each of my children. Problem is, that all games and other apps that I have installed on my users also is available for the kids. Is there a way to prevent this? They should have their separate games in their separate users. Games in being installed on D:
If those accounts are marked as a 'child' account you can use 'family settings' in windows 10. This functionality is included in the system already. You can easily block access to unwanted applications/games, you can control screen time, content and more.
You can easily find lots of tutorials on YT and other media on how to configure it.
GL.
Related
Does any one know of a alternative version of applocker? I am running windows 7pro and i would like to Control Policies for each user on our PC.
The only thing i really need it to do is block installs of anything with out administrator permissions via username and password. I would like to also block access to certain areas of the computer for example i would like to block the user from being able to access the control panel.
I dont really want to spend a ton of money on this i have about 200 computers i need to do this to.
Any help would be awesome!
"alternative version of applocker." Here is a tutorial whichc gives you a white list, a freebie applocker.
<http://www.howtogeek.com/195381/ensure-a-windows-pc-never-gets-malware-by-whitelisting-applications/>
Best! Robb Thurston. Forward FOSS and Freeware!
If anyone can help us I would be very grateful!
Every week we have multiple pc's to distribute to new clients. The machines have to be heavily customised with quite a few specifics:
Removal of most extra "spam" apps - Dell, Asus, Acer add icons we don't want.
Change desktop background
Add 2 specific user accounts, one of which is named according to machine name.
Set 2 specific passwords on the new accounts - site specific
Set Custom icons for each login
The machines are never setup for a domain, so Active Directory technologies can't be easily applied.
The volume and budget is such that the machines are not usually business class devices and we are not setup for any of the technologies used by much larger IT companies like group policy driven MSI updates etc.
Our current process is Donkey powered. On windows 7, deploying a new machine, fully installed with our software will take up to an hour if SQL Server is put on it or 55 mins if not. This is a totally manual endeavour that I'm itching to reform. As the machine make/model changes month on month, I can't rely on what will be installed.
I've looked at Ghost, but it won't work as each machine has it's own specific license key-rather than volumne license.
This process has been bugging me for a long time but it's not been my own department to sort out; however, having worked in schools where I could deploy software packages en masse, I can't believe my colleagues when they say this is the only way to do this job.
Can anyone help? We've done the google dance quite a lot with Windows 7 to solve this and now with Windows 8 but nothing quite fits what we do.
If this is NOT the place for this question, apologies-I did look for a Stack site thats more OS specific but didn't see one! :).
Thanks for any advice offered!
This is not an easy task. I can only give you a high level overview.
Look for the Microsoft tool SYSPREP - with it you can reset a machine you have previously installed with all the software and drivers you require to a state where it boots running a "mini-setup" including driver discovery.
Example:
Sysprep /oobe /generalize /shutdown
The programs remain installed. Shutdown the PC after sysprep ran and take an image using Ghost or any other imaging tool of your choice.
Note:
All essential hardware drivers such as chipset, harddisk, cpu etc. for the target hardware need to be registered using PNPUTIL before you are using SYSPREP, otherwise the prepared and applied image boots into a bluescreen on the target PC. Registering more drivers than you need does not harm as Windows detects the hardware and only installs the drivers it needs.
Simply put all driver packages in C:\drivers, then run the following command in a command window to register them for plug and play (note that using -a -i installs them, but here you need just -a, which advertises them). It will run recursively through all directories where *.inf files are contained:
for /f "tokens=*" %i in ('dir /b /s "C:\drivers\*.inf"') do pnputil -a %i
Hint: If you put this command in a batch file, you need to use %%i instead of %i.
You have to activate windows after the "mini-setup" ran if the firmware does not contain a windows key installed by the vendor. Regarding Windows activation, I found at least some information, however not in too much detail here.
This is how hardware vendors are preparing their PCs.
You can find a lot of information about it at Microsofts TechNet sites,
check this out: Deliver and deploy Windows 8
I hope this helps.
I have noticed that some browsers via a build in development feature allow you to choose different user agents.
Does this mean that they change their rendering engine?
Say for example, if I set Safari's user agent to internet explorer - will that then change the rending engine from webkit to trident?
At the moment on my mac I have Safari, Chrome, Firefox and iCab installed. I would imagine they would represent the different engine's better than the user agent function built in.
However you are only limited to installing 1 version of each unless you go the virtual machine or dual boot way.
So what is your advice? Run multiple virtual machine and of course the extra licenses to do it legal will need to be purchased. or stick with the user agent function built in and that gives a good enough interperatation of the differences??
Cheers Jeff
Say for example, if I set Safari's user agent to internet explorer - will that then change the rending engine from webkit to trident?
No. A user agent is just a string that the browser sends to identify itself. I could set my user agent to cheeseburger if I wanted. It won't use a cheeseburger to try and render the page.
Officially, the only correct way to run Internet Explorer is on Windows - which would require a Windows installation - a VM is a perfect valid and common solution. On a Mac you also have the option of Bootcamp.
There are other services, like http://browsershots.org/, that allow you to specify a URL and they will send you a screenshot of what the URL likes like in a particular browser. I typically don't like these solutions because they are slow, you don't have any debugging tools, etc.
the user agent setting in safari (and other browsers) only spoofs the user agent, it doesn't change the rendering engine. you can use that spoofing, to get for example the iPhone version of a webpage in your desktop safari. to check your page in different browsers, you could use some web service like http://browsershots.org/ (thats just the first google result) or setup an array of virtual machines. we do the latter, which ineed costs you 2-3 windows licenses, but you can pack a lot of browsers into one virtual machine, just distribute the different versions among different machines
I'm creating a multiplayer game for windows phone 7. How can I run multiple instances of the emulator in order to debug it?
You can indeed run multiple instances of the Windows Phone 7 emulator at the same time, and even debug them simultaneously, as I show in my blog post.
Open the folder [Your Drive Letter]:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Phone Tools\CoreCon\10.0\addons
Locate the file ImageConfig.en-US.xsl
Take a copy of it, leaving it in the same directory, and name it something like ImageConfig.en-US 2nd Instance.xsl
Open the copy in a text editor.
Locate the element DEVICE and change it's Name attribute, also assign a new GUID value to ID.
Scroll down the file to locate the part that says PROPERTY ID=”VMID”:
Put a new Guid inside that element – make sure though that you use capital letters rather than lower case.
Save the file
Re open the XAP deployment tool, or Visual Studio, if you already have them open, and you’ll see your new Emulator instances.
See the blog post for more details, and screenshots to clarify some of the steps
You can only run one instance of the Windows Phone 7 emulator at a time on a single machine - that's set by default, and if you don't want to mess with custom configurations. When you deploy from Visual Studio, the same instance is shared between the running instances of the development environment.
However, you can create additional instances of the WP emulator if you follow the instructions in this article. Make sure you backup the config files before editing them.
I had the same problem, trying to test my multiplayer game, and i eventually bought a WP7 device (HTC HD7) on ebay, unlocked it for development purposes, and used it and the emulator for testing.
Since I have experience with the android environment, I can say that denying the possibility of multiple emulator instances really damage the development efforts. Hope Microsoft will change this.
BTW, i'm using the Skiller SDK for the multiplayer and social side of my game (Their official WP7 SDK will be avialable in a few days, and you can download it from http://dev.skiller-games.com). I totally recommend it.
Good Luck.
Update: Since development machine has moved to Vista, i now automatically test as a standard user. And with XP being phased out, this question isn't so relavent anymore.
Since the Windows 2000 logo requirements, Microsoft has been requiring that applications run as standard user. Like everyone else i always ran my desktop as an administrative user. And like every developer: i log in, develop, run, and test as an administrative user.
Now with a new push to finally support standard users, i've been testing my applications by running them as a normal user - either through RunAs, or having my application relaunch itself with normal rights using [SaferCreateLevel][1]/[SaferComputeTokenFromLevel][2] if it detects it is running as an administrator. i quickly see how specacularly some of my apps fail under Windows XP as a standard user (due to my own stupidity). i also see how the same applications work fine under Vista (thanks to it's numerous shims to fix my bugs for me).
Aside: It's ironic that applications are more likely to run on Vista as a standard user than on XP.
The question is do you test your applications for standard user compatiblity? Do you develop as a standard user on XP? Do you ignore standard user access and hope for the best?
i tried, as a bonus, to have my app relaunch itself as a limited user (rather than normal user). It doesn't even come up - Windows says it failed to initialize. So there an area of future research on my part: making the app even support limited user.
i specifically referred to standard users on XP rather than Vista to enforce the truth that Vista is no different from XP as far as compatibility is concerned. And anyone who says their app fails on Vista must realize it also fails on XP.
I'm going to point you to Crispin Cowan's "Best Practices for Developing for Windows Standard User" talk. It's well worth watching.
If you want to sell your application to businesses then yes, you must test your application running as a standard user. If your application can't run without administrative privelleges, that's going to doom any sale in to a business.
Even in the home market, plenty of people can and do use limited users to go about their daily activities; I know I do.
Even administrative applications that do legimately need administrative privelleges should behave sensibly when running as a limited user. They should popup up a dialog informing the user that administrative rights are required to complete whatever task it was that they were attempting.
The best way to build software that respects these limitations is to develop your software under a user that has limited privileges. That way, every time you develop a feature you're implicitly testing whether it will work in a limited environment.
None of this is hard, it just take a degree of discipline - just like all quality assurance procedures do. People have been developing as non-root users on *nix for decades. Windows development is behind the curve in this respect.
Crispin, in his PDC talk, made a very good point, one that i had never considered before.
Google Chrome installs as a standard user: it installs in the per-user folder, without needing a UAC or OTS prompt, and everything is user friendly because the install is so easy. Unfortunatly, it is installed in a per-user folder, where the user can modify it.
Put it another way: malware can modify the Chrome exe.
Chrome would now become the biggest target for any mal-ware. And if some malware does modify it, Chrome is now sending your usernames, passwords, and credit card info back to home base, because that's what the new Chrome exe does.
That is why you sometimes want applications installed to protected locations.
Edit: The entire Microsoft "Click Once" deployment inititave suffers the danger.
I run on XP as a limited user almost all of the time and as the default. (On Vista, I use an adminstrative account and rely on UAC.)
I develop as a limited user. There's very little in Java and Visual Studio development that requires any more privilege than that.
If I need to run something under the limited account but with administrative privileges, I use a MakeMeAdmin (renamed and tuned as ConsoleMeAdmin) .bat script that creates an administrative console session.
If I really need to be an administrator in order to do installs and do first-time-runs so my security software can condition itself to allow network access to the new code (or not), etc., I will elevate my Limited User Account to Administrator long enough to get all of that done, then restart the account as Limited User again. Other than for Windows Updates, I do all of my downloads as a limited user and then install off-line after elevation to Administrator.
Because I only have a small workgroup LAN with no Active Directory, the only useful account types are Administrator and Limited User on XP. (I tried power user when I first began using XP but found that I could do without it and I prefer what that teaches me about not depending on special privileges in code I build.)
[PS: I also have Data Execution Protection (supported in hardware) active by default on my XP system, and you'd be surprised what that turns up.]
In the business environment most users are standard windows domain users.
To ignore standard user compliance tests is a really bad move.
And you will get each domain administrator that has to install your application very angry and they will go to your competition.
IMHO developing in an administrator account is not only unnecessary, but also highly dangerous! Suppose you check something on the internet while developing (stackoverflow comes to mind) and you catch some malware - history shows that this is far easier than you might have thought, e.g. through banners. As an administrator this malware will infect your computer and you might never get rid of it. It can even be a danger to all your development work (think of industrial espionage)!
If you have to run/test anything as an administrator, use either runas or even better virtual machines - that way you can use separate systems with defined behaviour (lots of problems with Windows software come from libraries that are of course available on the developer's PC, but hardly anywhere else!). In times of Microsoft Virtual PC and VMWare Server (both free) there isn't even an excuse due to high prices for virtualization software.
I've developed some Windows apps some years ago and besides their installers NOTHING ever required administrative rights. The run-time settings always belong to the user, not to the machine.
And yes, I run Windows XP as normal user at home too, as do my family members (parents etc.). Sometimes a crappy piece of software needs write access to their installation folder, but 95% of all installed apps run fine out-of-the-box by today.
Yes, we test that.
Probably the simplest, but most abused, rule is that you shouldn't do anything that requires write access to your program's install folder. Instead, there's a special folder called Application Data for that kind of thing.
Yes, and I took the general advice that its much easier to get your application to run on Vista if it runs ok on XP as limited user. To achieve that, and know if there were any problems running as limited user, I used LUABuglight.
I generally don't develop as limited user but only log on as limited user for testing.
The number of programs that require Admin rights and write to their own Program Files folder is amazing. To be honest, I've found very few programs that run correctly as limited user, from any software company, big or small.
Anyone else find it funny that Windows developers think its normal to run as Admin (apparently), but Linux developers pretty much never run as root?
As an old-time BOFH I will rain fire and ugly words over anyone asking for elevated rights for their client-side applications to run properly. It's just out of the question, always was ever since around 2001-2002 when we switched from Win9x to XP (sic).
As a newly born developer in a place where everyone on XP is a local admin by a forced group policy and changing it seems to take time and noone is especially inclined to start either - I've installed the RunAsAdmin shim that lowers me down to a normal user for most tasks including developing - much like in Vista. Recommended if you're stuck as a local admin on XP ^^