Windows 7 help question

[calimac]

I'm going to post this here because the Windows help forums I can find online all want you to sign up, and probably sign away your first-born privacy, before you can ask a question.

This relates to the Windows 7 I'm using at work. I've set up an account with parental controls, and a default allow of "off", so that only the programs I designate can be used.

For a while this worked fine, but then all of a sudden, every time I logged into the program, I would get some 12 or 15 warning screens informing me that various programs were being blocked. These programs were indeed not on the "allow" list, but I never asked for them to run, and they'd never showed up before. They were mostly various programs associated with Acrobat or Java.

So I put them on the "allow" list. Then, the next time I logged in to the account, another couple of programs sent "I'm being blocked" messages, that hadn't showed up before, because I'd let in all the programs that showed up before. So I put them on the "allow" list too. Then, the next time, yet another couple of programs did this.

This is getting ridiculous. How can I make it stop doing this, and how can I get programs I don't want to use from trying to load? As I noted above, they originally didn't do this, and the programs I did want to run worked fine without them.

Comments

[voidampersand.livejournal.com]

You can use AutoRuns to disable (or reenable) software that runs automatically at startup or as part of another program. It is a low-level tool for programmers and system administrators, but my experience is that it is very solid. The engineers who wrote it were hired by Microsoft and they have continued to support and enhance it as an official Microsoft tool. It may also be useful to run the Sysinternals Process Monitor (same website) to identify processes you don't want. Before you make any changes in AutoRuns, use it to save a backup of your settings. Then, if you disable something important, boot Windows into Safe Mode and put things back. If you are not sure what something is and whether you want to disable it, just do an internet search for its name.

Acrobat and Java have updaters that are annoying but I don't think they cause any problems. I presume you are using Acrobat and some software that is written in Java. If not, you can uninstall them. I can't say anything about other annoying processes, not knowing what they are.

Windows 7

[(Anonymous)]

Sounds like someone is using the computer in your absence and asking for those programs.