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CQC fully supports a kiosk mode, where the computer automatically boots up to a pre-determined full screen interface. The following steps are required to do this:
- Create a Limited CQC user account. Set it up to automatically load the desired initial user interface of the kiosk.
- Create a Windows account with very low privilege, so that it cannot modify the local computer in any way.
- Set up the computer to auto-log in to that Windows account (see below)
- Put a copy of the User Interface Viewer in the Startup menu of the Windows account so that the Interface Viewer will automatically start when the computer starts up. Edit the properties of this copy and add the /Kiosk and /FullScreen options to the command line.
- Set the CQC_USERNAME and CQC_PASSWORD environment variables in the per-user environment of the Windows account, and set them to the user name and password of the limited CQC account.
Once you have taken these steps, just turning on the machine will cause the computer to log into the low privilege windows account. The Interface Viewer will automatically get invoked since it is in the Startup menu. Since the limited CQC account is set up in the environment to have CQC automatically log in, when the Interface Viewer is run, it will log automatically into that account. Since the CQC user account is set to automatically load a specific user interface, that interface will be automatically invoked.
The /FullScreen options causes the Interface Viewer to immediately go full screen and cover the screen completely, including the task bar (though you should set the task bar not to be 'always on top'.) The /Kiosk mode tells the interface view that any attempt to get out of full screen mode (via Ctrl-Shift-F1), will prompt for a CQC administrative login. If a valid administrative login is not provided, then it will refuse to exit.
So if you remove the keyboard and mouse (and you can disable them in the BIOS so that they cannot just be plugged in), that computer becomes a secure kiosk which only exposes the CQC user interface via the touch screen. Only a CQC administrator can dismiss the interface viewer, and there is no way to invoke the Windows task bar or Alt-Tab window since there is no attached keyboard.
Windows Auto-Logon
To set up Windows to automatically log into an account, follow the following steps. It requires that you manually edit the registry, so be careful doing this if you've never done it before. Click on the Start button, then select the Run option. It will allow you to type in a program name to run, so type in RegEdit and press Ok to run the registry editor.
The registry is a hierarchical structure much like a disk drive, with 'directories' that contain other sub-directories and data, so you navigate it by expanding out those directories to get to the data you want. So click the little + sign beside the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE item, which will expand it out and show you the contents of that 'directory'. Continue by expanding out the following subsequent items:
SOFTWARE->Microsoft->Windows NT->Current Version
Inside that Current Version section is an item called Winlogon. Don't expand it, but select it by clicking on it with the mouse. You will then see in the right hand panel the values associated with the Winlogon item. You will need to add (or edit if they already exist) three associated values. Look for the DefaultUser and DefaultPassword values in the right hand panel. DefaultUser will often already exist, in which case you just need to set a new value on it. The DefaultPassword you'll generally need to add. These set the user name and password that should be used by default.
To add a new value to selected item, use the Edit Menu, and select New and then select String, since the items we are adding here are text values. This will create a new item and put the cursor on it so that you can type in a new name. Type the name of the new item you want to create and press Enter to save that new name. You can then double click on that item to edit the value. Enter the value you want and press Ok to save it.
Once you have set the default user name and password, you must enable auto-logon to use these new values by setting the value of the AutoAdminLogon value. It will be 0 (zero) by default. You need to double click on it and set the value to 1 (one) to enable automatic logon.
Once you've made these changes, you can close the registry editor. The next type the machine restarts, it should start using this information.
Note that, if you are in a Windows 2000 domain, then you should enter the default user name in the form 'somename@mydomain.com', where somename is the user name and mydomain.com is the name of the domain to log onto. That will let Windows know what domain you want to auto-log onto. If you are in a workgroup or standalone, then you want to log into the local machine, so just set a user name for a local user account.If you want to suppress the automatic logon, when you see the Windows logo come up during the boot sequence, hold down the Shift key as the boot process proceeds. Instead of automatically logging in, it will take you to the standard login screen.