"Hide" feature in Windows 7: Guest Mode

Windows 7 includes a near-hidden feature: Guest Mode, which is primarily intended for PCs shared by users and restored to its original configuration after the PC has been used by children and guests. This feature can be activated on individual user accounts; when the user logs out or restarts the PC, the changes made to these accounts after the Guest Mode is opened will be cleared and restored to the original configuration.

Guest Mode is useful in small classrooms, libraries and other public computer fields, but it is actually designed for home use, and parents may configure this feature for their children.

Secret: Guest Mode was originally called PC Safeguard. I think we all think this is a bad name. To this end, we can continue to treat the user account that opens Guest Mode as a "Safeguard" account.

Tip: Don't confuse Guest Mode with Guest Account, they are completely different things.

Guest Mode History

Guest Mode is derived from Microsoft's free technology called Shared Computer Toolkit. The latter first appeared on Windows XP in 2005. The software giant described the program as "a simple and effective way to protect shared computers from untrusted users and malware, restrict untrusted users from using system resources, and enhance and simplify the user experience." It is designed to prevent users from changing the desktop settings and system settings of a shared PC, installing malware and other unwanted software, or other behavior that harms the PC.

With the release of Windows Vista, Microsoft renamed the technology to Windows SteadyState and enhanced it with new features, including Group Policy support for management environments, simple security controls, and more. characteristic. But Windows SteadyState has the same major limitations as the Shared Computer Toolkit: they only support 32Bit systems.

In contrast to some online reports, Guest Mobe is not based on Windows SteadyState, although they have similar features. Unlike Windows SteadyState, Guest Mode is part of the underlying OS and is more user-oriented than PC-oriented. More specifically, Guest Mode is not a solution to the full features of a shared PC, it must be manually activated or configured on a user basis. It is designed for home users, not corporate management and education. But he has a huge advantage over SteadyState: Guest Mode supports 32-bit and 64-bit Windows 7.

Why use Guest Mode?

Guest Mode will be used by parents on home computers, and you want to create a secure user account for kids and guests who might use the PC. Every time the PC restarts or the account is logged out, all changes under the account that opens the Guest Mode will be cleared, and the system will be restored to the original state (when the Guest Mode is turned on). In addition, Microsoft also said that this feature is extremely useful for users who are worried about inadvertently harming their own systems. It can also be used on public PCs in schools, libraries, and other similar environments. But Guest Mode doesn't make much sense for some big environments, like companies and large educational institutions. The problem is that because it does not support Group Policy, it is speculated that Microsoft may release Windows 7 version of Windows SteadyState in the future to provide support in this regard.

Guest Mode Features

Guest Mode will appear in all Windows 7 SKUs, including the Stater version, and supports 32-bit and 64-bit. It mainly provides the following features:

* Prevents system settings from being changed

* Prevents software installation: It is useless to install the software in the state of activating Guest Mode, you can activate it before Install it, or disable it first, then install the software and enable it.

*Prevents hard disk write behavior from user profile files

*Data stored in user profile is deleted after logout

Secret: Protected The Windows 7 user account will be joined by a brand new unique local user group: SafeZone.

You may be wondering about the difference between Guest Mode and Guest Account in Windows 7. Guest Mode cannot replace the guest account, it is for real-time users. In the guest account you can change the desktop settings and the changes made after logging out remain.

Using Guest Mode

When you log in to the system using an account in Protected Mode (Open Guest Mode), you will notice a slight change. For example, the login account picture has become a cartoon character picture:

Users can change settings, create files, use different programs, and when they log out, these changes will be restored, all The files they just created are deleted. Users can save files to external memory when using Guest Mode:

In fact, when you insert external memory, a corresponding prompt will pop up:

What happens to the installer? This is not possible: Guest Mode prevents users from installing new programs. The configuration you are trying to make to the program will also disappear with the logout.

Configure Guest Mode

From the perspective of user experience, Guest Mode is basically a hidden feature of Windows 7, you can't search from the start menu, nor can you Control panel search. In order to open the Guest Mode, first open the control panel, select User Account and Family Safety, then select the user account (shortcut: open the Start menu, click on the account picture in the upper right corner), then click on "Manage another account", from the list obtained Select the account you want to add to Guest Mode.

Secret: Guest account cannot be used in the administrator account, it can only be used in standard user accounts. The account that opens Guest Mode must be in the logout state.

Click Set up Guest Mode under the corresponding account:

There are two options: You can turn Guest Mode on or off. At the same time, you can also choose the hard disk that needs to be locked:

By default, all local hard disks will be locked for users who open this feature, which means they can't access these disks after opening. Write to the file, you can choose to configure the locked hard disk (you must activate the option after opening the Guest Mode):

Secret: You can only lock the internal hard disk, but can not lock the external Hard disk, or USB storage.