Accounts Set up a Kiosk in Windows 11

Thanks. Oh well, at least that's closure.

Side rant - Why couldn't Microsoft hide the kiosk option entirely from the the home version instead of leaving it as a tease? Or at least indicate that it's only available on the pro version.

I'm in the middle of setting up a Kiosk at work. I'm thinking of three different implementations.

1. This approach (from this thread)
2. Installing Google Chrome and adding the correct parameter to the target so it opens as a kiosk
3. Using a tool called FrontFace Locker, which I've never experimented with.

Basically, this kiosk is going to be a book search catalog. I want to make sure there's no way for someone to break out of it and use any of the existing apps available on the Desktop that are pinned. Would I have to ultimately unpin those anyways?

Also, regarding this method, I'm not a fan of it, only because Google Chrome is not listed. Is there a way around this?

Would I be able to configure 3 different users for 3 different Kiosk setups? I'm asking because I don't know how the computer would function after establishing Kiosk Mode within Windows 11, if I'm able to get to another user or what. How would I be able to get to my admin account to make changes?

@CartmansPiehole

I'd tackle the whole thing another way.

If you are essentially running a book catalog then you will need some type of decent database for a query e.g author, category, publisher, date published, maybe USA cat of congress nr, price or a whole slew of other things - depends on your requirements -- install say MariaDB for the book catalog (Heidiisql is a great tool to set that up) and then offer WAMP (Windows, Apache, MySQL/MariaDB, Php) and you'd get a much better performing app although more work to set up -- but could easily run on Windows HOME. Install the MariaDB 64 bit ODBC driver and you are in business.

Heidisql is great in helping to set up the DB tables too !!! as it even generates the relevant SQL set for you too.

Here using test customer DB from a NAS server

HEDISQL :



Also using the ODBC data sources you can even get stuff from the database via EXCEL queries too -- often useful as well.



Login screen for phpmyadmin -- but you can design your own if required



simple, safe, foolproof !!!!

Note also using Windows defender you can block access to any / all applications too.

On the windows HOME system have a bog standard user with zero or a minimum r applications installed -- and you can remove the logout option on the phymyadmin screen so only user logons will work. - WD can block access to applications too - even on Windows HOME.

Kiosk is fine on PRO but you need to decide what you want to use it for and optimise the app(s) running on it. The main purpose really is for a single app otherwise it's messy and pointless.

Note for MariaDB use the 64 bit ODBC driver not the 32 bit one and it's port 3306 that's default port for the OBDC driver.

Cheers
jimbo

@jimbo45 thanks but it seems you may have misunderstood me.

The db is all setup. We own software for that. I'm only building clients for users to search for books. We already have that website too. The concern is setting up a kiosk in Windows 11, such that the user cannot break out of it, or press any shortcut keys that currently do something, like CTRL+P or CTRL+O as a few examples.

I'm finding that in setting up Edge in Kiosk Mode, I can't close it with ALT+F4, nor can I access the Start Menu, which is what I wanted. I also want other keyboard shortcuts disabled, such as CTRL+P, CTRL+O and others. I made a list, which I would be able to apply to across all browsers, should I choose to build a Kiosk from scratch. In otherwords, a standard user using Chrome instead of the Windows 11 Kiosk Mode.

CartmansPiehole said:

@jimbo45 thanks but it seems you may have misunderstood me.

The db is all setup. We own software for that. I'm only building clients for users to search for books. We already have that website too. The concern is setting up a kiosk in Windows 11, such that the user cannot break out of it, or press any shortcut keys that currently do something, like CTRL+P or CTRL+O as a few examples.

I'm finding that in setting up Edge in Kiosk Mode, I can't close it with ALT+F4, nor can I access the Start Menu, which is what I wanted. I also want other keyboard shortcuts disabled, such as CTRL+P, CTRL+O and others. I made a list, which I would be able to apply to across all browsers, should I choose to build a Kiosk from scratch. In otherwords, a standard user using Chrome instead of the Windows 11 Kiosk Mode.

Click to expand...

Many users like firefox too BTW. Depends on your user base whether Chrome would be a solution or not. Another possible suggestion would be to try out a Windows SERVER option (you can get 180 days Free trial on 2019 and 2022 LTS versions) - not sure what the relative costs would be on that but there you could restrict users to a single function.

Are the users logging on remotely with their own equipment -- if so the internet solition IMO would be the best. Kiosk works best for users actually logging on to the physical Windows machine directly -- e.g truck drivers getting their "loading dockets" printed from a warehouse on exit etc.

A website running your catalog application would seem the best way though for remote users. Should be easy enough to set up. Then it's also independent of what hardware remote users use as well.

Cheers
jimbo

How do you have Kiosk mode load a custom app instead of the dozen of apps I have no interest in running?

Thanks

davidm71 said:

How do you have Kiosk mode load a custom app instead of the dozen of apps I have no interest in running?

Thanks

Click to expand...

Hello David, and welcome.

Usually, you would select the app you want to use at step 7 while setting up the kiosk.

Brink said:

Hello David, and welcome.

Usually, you would select the app you want to use at step 7 while setting up the kiosk.

Click to expand...

Unfortunately Windows locks down your choices of apps to those from MS Store and doesn't let you run your custom app of choice.

davidm71 said:

Unfortunately Windows locks down your choices of apps to those from MS Store and doesn't let you run your custom app of choice.

Click to expand...

You could try using Shell Launcher below to configure a kiosk device that runs a Windows desktop application as the user interface. The application that you specify replaces the default shell (explorer.exe) that usually runs when a user logs on. This type of single-app kiosk does not run above the lockscreen.

I ended up using the registry shell hack to load my kiosk application. It worked very well. Disabled task manager while I was at it as well. Had to create a standard user account with automatic login which loads the app right away. Pressing Ctrl-Alt-del is safe from security standpoint and logging off logs right back in to the kiosk account. Left the admin account password protected and only way to log and select the other account is to press the shift key while logging off and back in. Just want to warn others though to be careful running regedit with admin privledges and making changes the the Current-User tables will actually affect your main admin login account and not the user account. This happened to me and no matter what I did I was locked out of Windows after that. The fix was an easy one though. You do a ctrl-alt-del and select restart while pressing the shift key and reboot into the Win-RE environment and load up a command window where you just rename the kiosk app to something else. After that was able to correct my registry error and have a backdoor back into windows if I had to. Thanks.

@davidm71
which registry hack did you end up using, I ask as going through many at the moment and want to find best solution other than having to use intune mdm or some 3rd party lockdown software as the devices are going to be in their own environment no internet access and don't need any of the engineers using their own home hack studies to bypass anything. I looked up the shell launch and couldn't get it to work on W11 pro machines and despite no one wanting to purchase thin clients, it does seem like over expense at our level.

Thanks in advance