Please help me.
It’s my mother’s win7 Compaq laptop.
She has to take it in with major problems every few months or so, has had to reinstall windows numerous times and lost her data as a result, had to replace hard drive and even battery, all at considerable cost. I live and work halfway across the world and many’s the time we couldn't talk on skype because of this problem.
What problem, you ask? My 13-year old nephew. He comes over every weekend and installs and plays games like Minecraft (often installing viruses/malware right along, being an idiot). It’s he who cooked the battery with excessive use. He’ll sometime set up different accounts on the computer, so my mom can’t even log on. She is too soft-hearted to refuse him (and he does have a tough family situation; computer, in his own words, is his very life). As you may imagine, mom is not computer savvy enough to make any changes herself.
I am visiting now, first time in years. I want to do a factory restore and then somehow make sure he can never use it for anything other than simple browsing. He of course has his own computer, but he whines that it’s too slow.
Here’s what I’d like to do:
Set up a password admin account for myself. That way if some changes need to be done after I’m gone again, I can have mom log in and talk her through it over the phone.
A guest account for her (and him) to use with very limited privileges. Of course, ideally this account could make zero changes, but then she’ll need to pull photos off her camera and such.
Internet explorer is the plague, but if I didn’t install any other browser, there is a way to disable downloads in ie, isn't there? This is a huge inconvenience, as she’s used to firefox and would need to download stuff sometime, plus he could in his deviousness just download whatever he needs on another computer and bring it over, but better than nothing.
The most important thing would be to prevent this guest account user from un/installing anything whatsoever, or making any system changes.
I can just think of these two things, try to disable downloads and making changes like un/installing programs. But perhaps you can think of other things that should also be done to make sure the computer stays untouched. Perhaps there is a free program I should install that would do this better than just windows settings.
If it's possible, the goal is to let her continue normal use (pretty much just browsing) and disable any installs and if possible, playing off/online games.
I'm no computer wiz, so please use instructions anybody can follow.
Many, many thanks.
David
It’s my mother’s win7 Compaq laptop.
She has to take it in with major problems every few months or so, has had to reinstall windows numerous times and lost her data as a result, had to replace hard drive and even battery, all at considerable cost. I live and work halfway across the world and many’s the time we couldn't talk on skype because of this problem.
What problem, you ask? My 13-year old nephew. He comes over every weekend and installs and plays games like Minecraft (often installing viruses/malware right along, being an idiot). It’s he who cooked the battery with excessive use. He’ll sometime set up different accounts on the computer, so my mom can’t even log on. She is too soft-hearted to refuse him (and he does have a tough family situation; computer, in his own words, is his very life). As you may imagine, mom is not computer savvy enough to make any changes herself.
I am visiting now, first time in years. I want to do a factory restore and then somehow make sure he can never use it for anything other than simple browsing. He of course has his own computer, but he whines that it’s too slow.
Here’s what I’d like to do:
Set up a password admin account for myself. That way if some changes need to be done after I’m gone again, I can have mom log in and talk her through it over the phone.
A guest account for her (and him) to use with very limited privileges. Of course, ideally this account could make zero changes, but then she’ll need to pull photos off her camera and such.
Internet explorer is the plague, but if I didn’t install any other browser, there is a way to disable downloads in ie, isn't there? This is a huge inconvenience, as she’s used to firefox and would need to download stuff sometime, plus he could in his deviousness just download whatever he needs on another computer and bring it over, but better than nothing.
The most important thing would be to prevent this guest account user from un/installing anything whatsoever, or making any system changes.
I can just think of these two things, try to disable downloads and making changes like un/installing programs. But perhaps you can think of other things that should also be done to make sure the computer stays untouched. Perhaps there is a free program I should install that would do this better than just windows settings.
If it's possible, the goal is to let her continue normal use (pretty much just browsing) and disable any installs and if possible, playing off/online games.
I'm no computer wiz, so please use instructions anybody can follow.
Many, many thanks.
David
My Computer
- Computer type
- PC/Desktop
- OS
- Win 7
