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A friend and client installed Cybersitter on her computer a few years ago when her sons were younger. Now her sons are adults and have their own laptops, so she didn’t want the program any longer, but she didn’t remember the password to run and uninstall the program. It wasn’t really a problem however until the Cybersitter went wrong somehow, and blocked her Internet. She thought the computer had viruses, so she asked me to bring it in to my computer repair shop.

I discovered it had Cybersitter running in the background, but without the password I couldn’t uninstall it. So I changed the registry instead.

You can do this too.

First make a backup of your registry in case you make a mistake.

To make a backup:
1. Go to the Start button and select Run. (If you have Vista or Windows 7 you may not see the Run feature, so go to Start button, then in the Search box, type Run.) Type in regedit and press Enter. Now the registry editor will come up.

2. Select the File menu and then Export. Decide where you want to save your backup. I usually pick Desktop. Type in what you want to name your backup.

3. Click Save.

You now have a backup of your Windows registry.

Now you can repair the Cybersitter problem:
1.Go to Start button then to Run. Type regedit.

2. Navigate to the key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESystemCurrentControlSetControlSecurityProviders.
3) Delete the key ‘net98’.

Now you are not being screened or filtered but will have to do this everytime you start Windows.

Or to permanently disable Cybersitter:
1. Navigate to:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESoftwareMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionRun.
2. Delete any ‘C2K’ keys.

Restart your computer.
You are now Cybersitter free!

I don’t like any kind of “parenting” software that monitor or restrict users because they often backfire and cause the computer to malfunction. And then, unless the user or computer repair shop can find a fix like the above you’ll end up having to reinstall Windows and lose everything. It’s much better to talk to your kids about your expectations and values and supervise them while online. If they go to inappropriate sites, kick them off for the day or week. Explain why you disapprove. Give them the skills and values to make decisions about what they do on the computer. This will last into adulthood and won’t hurt your computer in the meantime. I did this with my kids and they all are the kind of people I would trust on my computer now.

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