win98 alternative shell

[Davros]

I have an old pentium2 - voodoo3 - vortex2 machine
I need to get rid of it so ive decided to give it to my neighbor for his 8 year old son
what i want to do is install some games on it and have some way of hiding the start menu and all the pc related stuff so he just gets a screen with a selection of games
what do you suggest

 

[tongue_of_colicab]

I'm sure there is some piece of software that can do that but I wouldnt want to run anything extra on such a old machine. Isnt it alot easier to just make a seperate user account for him and block everything in the policy? I believe you can pretty much get rid of anything under the start button. Maybe apart from the all programs tab (never checked if you can hide that, why would you?) but you can just delete everything there so he cant acces anything anyway.

Ofcourse if he really shouldnt acces anything sell the pc and from the 20 bucks you make buy him a modded PSX lol.

 

[Davros]

using poledit is an idea but was hopeing for something easy to set up like a htpc or in car interface

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Damn, forgot what it was, but there Win9x (including 98) had an included shell that basically mimic'd the Win3.x shell. IE - you just had windows/folders. You could then easily configure which Folders/Windows were available.

Been a long time since I did product support for Win9x. See if I can jog my memory...

Ah ha, here we go.

http://forums.speedguide.net/archive/index.php/t-103797.html

The important line is to change shell=Explorer.exe to Progman.exe.

That will launch into a Win3.x like shell. Not sure if that will work for you or not. You can then put whatever you want on the desktop for the kid to launch.

Of course, if the kid is smart there's nothing to prevent him from navigating to the HD and launching whatever he wants. Or hitting Win-R and launching explorer.exe.

There also used to be custom shells you could download an use. For example, one I remember didn't even show a desktop, just a menu you could customize with the programs you wanted to allow the user to launch.

No clue if those still exist in any form anywhere however.

Regards,
SB

 

[Davros]

thanks, i just want to prevent the kid breaking anything

 

[mito]

In the old days the kid would have only a CLI with which to deal...

That's how most of us began right?

Cheers.

Edit: ok, I wasn't 8...

 

[Blazkowicz]

Actually for a DOS machine I can do a simple batch menu for launching games (using echo, choice, IF ERROLEVEL == x goto y), I did that for a public DOS gaming machine. The menu can be launched by autoexec.bat and can loop if needed. It's meant for listing games and allowing to launch one with pressing a single letter; more for convenience than for locking down.

I put an option to exit the menu, I could remove it but nothing stops from breaking with CTRL-C, then users have full control over the machine. They could anyway hit F5 or F8 at booting and bypass config.sys and/or autoexec.bat. But then again no big deal


I found that link regarding explorer.exe replacement : Using Novell Application Launcher instead of explorer.exe. It's the same as using progman.exe .. but you need that Novell App unfortunately
http://www.novell.com/coolsolutions/trench/3458.html
http://support.novell.com/techcenter/articles/ana19970405.html

So you could find similar, freeware app launcher program and try using it as the shell.
Lastly, a cool trick for windows 2000/XP : you can set cmd.exe as the shell . that way you get no desktop, only a command-line windows (you can launch more by typing start cmd).