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Microsoft Plus! 95 for Kids included a parental control program called Protect It!, which had you set a key (i.e., a password) to control who could reconfigure it. The help file says "If you forget your Protect It! key, follow the instructions in the jewelcase booklet." Similarly, the readme says the way to uninstall it is to "Follow the instructions in the Tips section of the jewel case booklet." What did that booklet say the procedure for these were? I looked for scans of it on archive.org but I didn't see any.

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    I guess in practice you could probably boot into DOS mode and remove the software from there… but that probably was not the official way to do it.
    – user3840170
    Commented Jun 8, 2022 at 20:57
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    @user3840170 For the record, booting into DOS mode and then using regedit to delete HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies for your user account was enough to unofficially work around the protection.
    – Joseph Sible-Reinstate Monica
    Commented Jun 11, 2022 at 19:41

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
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The booklet says:

If you are locked out of your computer because you forgot the Protect It! password, you must reinstall Protect It! using the Setup program. You'll need permission from the computer owner to run Setup. Have the disc handy.

To prevent others from running Setup, remove Setup from the Allowed Programs box in Protect It!. For more information, please see the Readme file.

To remove Protect It! from your computer:

  1. Put your Microsoft Plus! for Kids disc in the CD caddy (if needed), and then insert it into the CD-ROM drive.
  2. On the taskbar in Windows 95, click the Start button, and then click Run.
  3. Type: rundll32.exe d:\protect!\piclean.dll,clean or, if you CD-ROM drive letter is not d, substitute the letter of your CD-ROM drive. Important: Don't type any spaces around the comma!
  4. Exit and restart Windows.
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I just found an old KB article Q171703 that gives you a different official way to reset the password than the booklet says. The gist of it:

rundll32.exe d:\protect!\pireset.dll,reset 1

It also lets you reset the Content Advisor password. Screenshot: enter image description here

Additionally, according to https://www.betaarchive.com/wiki/index.php/Microsoft_KB_Archive/163430, deleting MList from HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Microsoft Kids\Kids Plus!\Special was yet another way to do this.

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