Lock down your PC with Steady State

If you’ve used a PC at a library or internet café, you’ve probably discovered that it’s been ‘locked down’. In all likelihood, Windows will have barred you from installing new programs, launching the Run dialogue and fiddling about in Control Panel. It’s understandable, of course ­ no administrator wants to deal with a Windows installation trashed beyond redemption by a vandal or inexperienced user.

Many shared, public PCs are configured using Microsoft’s Steady State (the new name for the Shared Computer Toolkit). This provides administrators with an easy method of implementing user restrictions. It’s suited not only to commercial and institutional environments, but is also perfect for the home. If you’re setting up a PC for a child, for instance, Steady State will give you almost total control over what they can and can’t do.

One of the best things about Steady State is the cost: a grand total of nothing. You’re good to go so long as you’re running Windows XP Home Edition, XP Professional (32-bit only), XP Tablet PC Edition or any flavour of Vista (again, 32-bit only). To download it (it’s only 6.4MB) and get underway, go to www.tinyurl.com/376exg.

Getting started
Steady State needs to be installed and configured under a standard user account (one with administrator privileges). When you fire it up, you’ll see that it’s split into two areas: Global Computer Settings and User Settings. Most of the action will take place in the latter. To begin then, click ‘Add a new user’ (you can add as many as you like, each with their own set of restrictions). Simply go through the usual routine of choosing a name, icon and password (this is optional).

Preparing a user account
With the new Steady State account created, you’ll see a page with four tabs ­ General, Windows Restrictions, Feature Restrictions and Block Programs. For now, whizz through the lot and untick everything, leaving the account almost completely unrestricted.

Next, if there are any programs not yet installed that you want the Steady State user to be able to access, install them now. When you’ve finished, log out of the current account and log into the Steady State account (its icon will appear on Windows’ standard login screen, alongside the icons for your ‘normal’ accounts). Once logged in, remove any desktop icons for programs you won’t be making available. Likewise, create any necessary icons for programs you will be making available.

In our example account, we’ve got icons for Adobe Reader, Deepburner, Internet Explorer, Live Messenger, Media Player, Photo Gallery, a selection of Windows’ games, and the Calc and Writer elements of Open Office.

You might want to adjust the way Windows looks, too. For us, the interface defaulted to Windows Standard (similar to Windows Classic), but we’re running Vista, so we’ve changed this to Windows Aero.

Setting user restrictions
Now you need to log out and get yourself back into the account you were using earlier. Once there, launch Steady State and click the new account’s icon (under User Settings). It’s time to start applying some restrictions.

Under the General tab, there are two timers you can set ­ one logs the user off after a specified idle time, one logs them off after a specified session time. Setting the latter is a great way to stop a child from sitting at the PC for unhealthily long periods (although of course they can always just log back on). If desired, you can have the timer shown permanently onscreen as a countdown.

When the user logs off (either voluntarily or as the result of a timer), you can also have the PC automatically restart. This option is useful if you’re implementing Disk Protection (see How to Tweak Steady State’s Disk Protection), but don’t use it if the PC has other accounts and is set up for Fast User Switching ­ anyone else logged on will lose all unsaved data.