Disable F8 on startup?

[Merkuri]

I know I'm a bit late to the party, but what about setting the admin account to have a password and not letting the kid have that password?

That would not prevent the kid from booting into safe mode. Choosing what mode to boot into happens before Windows is loaded (and thus, before you log in). However, it may be possible to restrict certain users from being able to log in while in safe mode. I'm not sure how to do this, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's possible.

So, you'd have two accounts on the machine, one is an administrator and one is a "normal" user that is not allowed into safe mode. If you guard the administrator password carefully and pick something the kid won't be able to guess then he or she could still cause the machine to boot into safe mode but wouldn't be able to do anything at that point because the one user account they have access to can't log into safe mode.

 

[Redrobes]

If the kid is that smart he would burn a stand alone CD copy of ubuntu and just cold boot into that and get his net access without the box even seeing windows, loading any control software, going via ntldr or anything other than the BIOS. Face it, if he has physical access then there is no security.

My opinion is to put in a internet proxy firewall at the source and let him have access to the end of that. Then you lock that box up with a key. You can grant hourly access times and set access control. Not cheap, not easy, not hack proof either and thus not a good answer, but the only one I know.

If I were being honest I would think that maybe the problem is not the PC or the kid...

 

[Tarek]

I'm not going to comment on the bit about "being on the computer too much".

Second, if she were really interested in limiting the girl's access to the internet, which seems to be the main point, I'd uninstall the "time limit" software and go to the router. You can set access times for each connected computer. In addition, you could point the router to OpenDNS, and have further control by limiting access to sites.
Of course, to prevent a reset to factory defaults, the router would have to be physicaly locked up.

This solution would leave the girl free to use the computer offline whenever she wants, would be hard to bypass, and would limit the girl's time on the internet without doing risky things like disabling safe mode, password or no.