Here’s the situation. I’ve put together a basic computer for my 6 year old to use.
It has 2 hard drives “C” for the operating system (WinXP Pro) and kid games and the like, and “D” for movies and other stuff as well as back up files of drive “C”.
I have shortcuts for movies (that are on “D”) on the desktop so there is no need for her to ever mess with “D” but you know kids they will click click and drag drop and generally play around with all the buttons and icons no matter what I say.
I would like to make “D” read only so she can access the movies through the desktop shortcut but is not able to make any changes or deletions to it.
What I need is some program that will allow read only but will give me full access via a password so I can update her movies when necessary.
I have done some Googling but can only find programs that restrict access to a drive which is not really what I want.
If you set your child to use a limited account (and have an administrator account with a password) you can set file permissions on the folders in the D: drive to make them read-only to your child. Then you can log on to the administrator account to add movies, and your kid cannot change anything on the D Drive.
There may be issues with the version of XP, though. Some (XP Home, is think) do not have the properties sheet that lets you right click a folder and access the security permissions tab. There is a way to install that, though, or you can use safe mode.
You can let your kid wreak havok on the computer, fill it with all kinds of viruses, delete system files, etc. At the next reboot, all changes will be reverted back to normal. You can also set a non-revertable space on the disk so your kid can save his personal files.
**Dog80 ** - I’ve looked at programs like HDD Sheriff and as you say it will put the computer back to the original state but she likes to keep score of her Barbie and hidden object games as well as downloading music videos and creating new folders and things like that, all that would be lost at each reboot.
si_blakely - I have XP Pro where I can open multiple accounts though I have never bothered with this. Guess it’s time to look at this feature and see if it will do what I want.
