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      - IE and Explorer
        Kiosk Computers

Section(s): IE and Explorer
Published on Jan 31, 2006.
Last Modified on Jan 31, 2006.
Last Modified by Mitch Tulloch.
Rated 4.3 out of 5 based on 10 votes.

How to set up a computer as a kiosk for web browsing.

A kiosk computer is a computer that's in a public place and is used for limited purposes such as browsing the web and checking webmail. You can easily set up a simple kiosk computer by doing the following:

Open Registry editor and navigate to the following key:

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon

Change the value of Shell from

Explorer.exe

"C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe" -k http://www.google.com

Now restart your machine and log on and Internet Explorer will automatically open in Kiosk (full screen) mode, with no Start Menu visible. Now normally if you switch IE to kiosk mode using the F11 function key, you can simply press F11 again to return IE to normal mode. But if the Windows shell is changed from Windows Explorer to Internet Explorer using the registry tweak above, pressing the F11 key doesn't bring IE out of kiosk mode.

Cheers,
Mitch Tulloch
www.mtit.com/mitch/

About Mitch Tulloch

Mitch Tulloch was lead author for the Windows Vista Resource Kit from Microsoft Press, which is the book for IT pros who want to deploy, maintain and support Windows Vista in mid- and large-sized network environments. Mitch was also the author of Introducing Windows Server 2008 and technical project lead for the Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 Resource Kit, both books also from Microsoft Press. For more information on these and other books by Mitch, see www.mtit.com .