How to make a Computer Lock

Do you have a computer that someone knows the password, or are to lazy to lock the computer when you leave, even for a minute? Well this is an instructable our friendly neighborhood nerd has made for us. You will need:

a computer (running Windows 3.1 or higher)
notepad or other simple text editing software
arms and legs are optional if you have speech recognition
keyboard

NOTE:This will not work on Macs (sorry macs)

Step 1 Open Notepad

First open notepad.

Win 95-2000, Me
Start>Programs>Accesories>Notepad

Win XP and up
Start>All Programs>Accesories>Notepad

If you see the window shown below then you have notepad.

Comments

[BigMikeDog]

When i run it says it's lock but i still can open folders and applications it dosent seam to lock can you help?

[Super_Nerd]

You could make it stop explorer.exe and restart it when the password is entered. I'm not very good with windows shell objects but you can make it run a batch file to stop and restart explorer.

[BigMikeDog]

ok thanks i know that will work but i got know idea how do do that :- \

[Super_Nerd]

Sorry but I'm not the best at batch files. Maybe you could try

taskkill explorer.exe

to freeze any background use

and in another file

start explorer.exe

to unlock the computer
Sorry if this doesn't work.

[BigMikeDog]

yep they both work but you do taskkill /IM explorer.exe
the only problem is that 7 is protected form killin the program so then i just restarts it self

[BigMikeDog]

im using this code can anyone help me with the line in the { }'s
@echo off
Title computer lock
cls

:Lock
echo "Please inter a password to lock your computer"
set/p "1Pass=>"
taskkill /IM explorer.exe
cls
echo "This Computer is locked."

:Locked
taskkill /IM explorer.exe
echo "Please type the password to unlock the computer"
set/p "2Pass=>" {this line needs to be skiped if nothing is enterd so it becomes a if enter key hit then take entered value and set it as varlable 2pass anyone know a way to do that?}

:Unlock
if %1pass%==%2pass% then goto End
goto Locked

:End
echo "Have a nice day!"
PAUSE

[knexinglemon]

lol for mine if you click the x button two times it sais correct welcome back

[Super_Nerd]

That' because when you press the x, without entering anything, the computer assumes your password is nothing. When you x again, nothing was entered just like when you x-ed before, so it lets you back in.

[lanky.ninja]

What stops the user from simply minimising the popup?

[Super_Nerd]

There isn't a minimize button, and the X is greyed out. The only way to stop this from running is to go to task manager and kill the wscript.exe process. This isn't brick solid though, as you can still use the computer behind this. This program was intended to keep people who don't know much about computers off. A way to make this more secure would be to disable explorer.exe until the computer is unlocked.

[lanky.ninja]

I guess it would for complete ludites