Disabling safe mode in windows xp

[Technoid]

A customer asked me this….

After a bit of cajoling he admitted it was because his teenage son used safe mode to disable some kind of netnanny software he had bought to make sure the kid was “safe” from all perils of internet

Now I don’t know of any way to disable it but I did promise him I’d ask around

When he left he was mumbling about how sysadmins on networks had to know how to disable the safe mode othervise their users would quickly use safe mode to gain admin status and hack themselves out on the internet

[lowlifecat]

there is a simple solution for this. If no one's posted it by the time i get home tonight i'll give it a shot.

[Wombat]

Yes, it can be done. Delete the registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\SafeBoot, but be sure to back it up first. However, this is probably not the best solution. Even in safe mode, you still need to have the password for the admin account, I believe. So have him set one up.

Then to really cover his butt he'll need to set the computer in the BIOS to boot of the Hard Drive first (to avoid password-changing boot disks), and turn on the password protection of the BIOS settings.

[Technoid]

actually I'll bet that all accounts on the machine as admin priviledges

The bottom line is that this guy got no clue whatso ever and was to irrate over that the magical netnanny program didnt plug every concevable hole that he didnt want to listen to anything except straight "to disable safe mode: do this!" explantions

Perhaps he will have simmered down enough to next time he visits for me to explain stuff like passwords, admin rights etc etc