When I was a high school senior. I was in charge of the network and the technology lab. Part of my job included maintaining and fixing the computers. As a systems administrator, I required full access to the network and the machines. Unfortunately, some of the computers were locked. Back when I was a freshman that the previous systems administrator installed a feature crippler called Winlock on all of the machines to prevent students from changing settings like the desktop background and installing programs like computer games.

I hate it when people install programs the cripple functions in the operating system. But, I suppose it was necessary back then since the computers in the lab had Windows 98 installed. Unfortunately, Windows operating systems like 98 are not based on the NT Kernel. Therefore, WinLock was necessary in order to render a "guest user" environment for the students.

Cracking WinLock
Unfortunately, everybody in the past who had anything to do with the computer department forgot the password. So, I had to try some rudimentary workarounds like deleting the Winlock *.exe files. When that didn't work, I was at the verge of just reinstalling Windows. But, I decided to first look into the registry. There, I found where all the Winlock magic came from. In fact, it wasn't really magic. I discovered that you didn't have to buy expensive software to cripple features for guest users. If you knew what you were doing, you just have to change a couple of registry keys. The related keys are as follows:

Windows Policies
To enable or disable features in the operating system, you would just change the relevant keys in these registry entries. For example, to disable the control panel you just change (or create) a dword "NoDispCPL" with the value of 00000001 in HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System.



Quick Fix
I made it easy for you. If you have a crippling software or some features have somehow been disabled, I created a registry file that will enable everything.

1. Just copy the text at the end of this article and paste it in a new file called "cure.reg" on the C: drive.
2. Restart your computer in MS-DOS mode.
3. Then at the C:\> prompt, enter "regedit cure.reg".
4. When it is complete just restart the computer. Basically this cure.reg file contains the text of the keys above but instead of 00000001 (which mean "yes") it replaces it with 00000000 (which means "no").

Note that this article only applies to Windows 95 to ME. Windows NT, XP, and Vista use a different, much easier way to change policies.

Hope this works! Comment on your experience!

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