Where do I start: Need to stop ctrl+alt+del for a Kiosk.

[RHenningsgard]

Greetings all! I am working to develop an app which, when run, will temporarily put an XP box into a "kiosk" mode, running only Internet Explorer in its "-k" kiosk mode. I have already used normal Windows hooks to block task switching with alt+tab, and the obvious things like ctrl+esc, alt+F4, and so on. Also have the mouse right-click handled and blocked.

So then there's the last bugaboo: How can I prevent ctrl+alt+del from bringing up the Windows Security dialog? Can this be done with any part of madCollection, or am I stuck writing and installing a kernel-mode filter?

I'd even buy a commercial solution, if anyone can recommend one.

Thanks,

Rob---

[madshi]

Not sure whether there's another way to block these keys than writing a kernel mode driver. I simply don't know what Windows does when and where when the user presses these keys.

[RHenningsgard]

Thanks, Madshi. Yes, after a few more days of research, I have concluded that this chore can be done only with a kernel mode driver shim. There are a couple commercially-available, and a couple of open source versions out there.

Interestingly, though, there's also a hack to block ctrl+alt+del, at least in Win2K:

If you set up the registry keys...

HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\

DefaultUserName = "AnActualUserAccount"
DefaultPassword = "TheUsersActualPassword"
AutoAdminLogon = "2"

...then the machine will auto-logon into that account, with ctrl+alt+del disabled! I found this somewhere on the internet, and darned if it doesn't work, with the undocumented value "2".

In case anybody new to AutoAdminLogon tries this, there's something else you need to know: To _prevent_ the machine from logging on, you've got to press and hold the left shift key during Windows startup.

Rob---

[madshi]

Interesting. I didn't know either of those 2 bits of information. Thanks for sharing...