http://tk.ms11.net/
Supported on: Windows 2000/XP/Vista
If you have a toddler that has just learned how fun it is to eject your CD drive and/or power off your computer while you were in the middle of an intense game of Rainbow Six, then you know you've wished there was a small gate protecting your buttons on the front of your computer (shoulda bought that case with the front panel door...darn it!), or that a teddy bear popped out of the side of the computer to distract your child from the blinky lights and buttons on the front.
Aside from the annoyance factor, an ejected CD drive could break, or worse, injure your child if they happen to run into it while opened. Fortunately, there's help!
ToddlerKeys is a small utility that sits in your System Tray that locks your CD/DVD drives from opening, and disables the power button from turning off your PC.
In addition to the drive/button lock features, you can use ToddlerKeys to lock the screen in such a way that keeps curious mousers from dragging and dropping your budget and expense spreadsheet to the recycle bin...similar to a password-protected screen saver, but its only goal is to keep a young child from accidentally doing something harmful to your system files.For sure, the best feature is the ability to lock out the CD drive/power button; my 20 month-old daughter got bored with pressing the CD eject button after only a couple tries...however, with that said, the reset button still resets the computer...so, ToddlerKeys doesn't protect against accidental resets. To make matters worse, my wife's computer doesn't have one of those nice recessed pinhole reset buttons. Your option at this point? Unplug or glue the reset button. You can still hold the power button down for 4 seconds to shut off the computer, so this may not be a bad work-around for most.
If your system has been properly configured for ACPI (power management), you could adjust the power button behavior in your control panel/power options, but this makes it just that much easier for those who don't want to dig for that setting.
The "screen lock" mode is nothing more than a black screen with a text notifier saying to type 'quit' (configurable). You can also specify to set ToddlerKeys to be a "screen saver" of sorts - allowing it to take over after so many minutes of keyboard/mouse inactivity - playing various sounds and displaying pictures.
My wife totally needed this - now, if we can figure out how to keep our daughter from climbing on the chairs!Likes
- Blocks CD/DVD drive button from ejecting
- Disables power button
- Easily disabled/enabled via Systray (double-click to lock)
- Won't disable reset key - not sure if this is possible via code? - medium
- Would be nice if it was an actual screen saver - minor
4 comments:
Disabling reset is not possible by software. It works in pure hardware way by interrupting "power good" signal from power supply to motherboard and causing it to... well, reset. :)
@Rarst: Thanks for clearing that up...good to know!
Why not just unplug the reset cable from the motherboard then? easy fixed!
@stag: True, with most systems you can do this, but my wife's computer has one of those 'all-in-one' plugs that plugs the entire power button assembly to the motherboard.
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