At times, you do feel like locking down a particular user account in Windows, but actually doing it is the challenging part. If you feel that someone on your computer is not doing what they supposed to be doing, you can use SteadyState from Microsoft and lock-down that user account and allow them to do only what they need to do on the computer.

 

In this tutorial, I’ll show you how to restrict a particular user account in Windows so you can stop worrying about what that user is doing online or on the computer.

 

Installing and Configuring SteadyState

 

To get started, download and install SteadyState from here.

 

Click Run when prompted

 

 

Accept the license terms and click Next to continue until the software is installed.

 

 

Click Add a new user if the user account is not already created on the computer. If the account is already created, select it from the list.

 

 

Enter the user name and password for the account then click OK.

 

 

Here, you can set the user’s session to end after one hour using the computer. Also prevent the user from making damaging changes to your computer by locking his/her profile.

 

 

On the Windows Restrictions tab, select the restriction level to apply to the account. The levels range from Custom to High restrictions. The high restriction options remove most of the applications and menu from the user desktop. You can also select to hide the Local Disk from the user.

 

 

Feature Restrictions: Here you can configure Internet Explorer to prevent the user from going places other then specified below. You can also limit what the user can do online here.

 

 

Block programs you don’t want the user accessing here. To block a program, select it from the left column and move it to the right column. If the program is not in the list, select Browse to find it.

 

 

This is the message the user gets when he or she logs on.

 

 

The user desktop settings are severely restricted as you can see. Just a few programs are allowed to run within the user’s profile.

 

 

 

Now you can go to bed without worrying too much about what the user is doing online or on the computer.