Hello everybody, and welcome back to another video.
Now in today's episode, yes we're going to be revisiting
the Disney Windows XP Netpal netbook thing that we recently explored in
THIS video. And as suggested by some of you guys,
we're going to be restoring the "Blue Magic" Netpal here
back to its original factory state
by using the media that I've got burned to this DVD right here.
Because it is currently, very interestingly, running Raspberry Pi OS, which is an
interesting operating system choice for something that isn't a Raspberry Pi.
But at some point that's what somebody decided to put on here.
So, we're going to restore it back to its original Windows XP installation
and we'll also be taking a look at some of the additional
programs that were not installed on the pink Netpal — mainly the
Parental Controls program, the original one, because if you remember
from the other video, the software that was on the pink Netpal was
upgraded and it wasn't, you know, Disney-ified like this one is going to be.
So we'll take a closer look at that.
Of course the first challenge I had to overcome here,
which isn't really a challenge at all, is that there's no internal disk drive
in this laptop — or netbook, if you want to be proper here — and that's
very common with netbooks because it was usually the
first thing to get removed to make these machines a lot smaller.
So we're going to be using an external
DVD drive right here to accomplish that.
And I should also mention that the software I've got burned on this disc
is not technically the original ISO file because I had to modify it, because
the original ISO file — get this — was around 200 megabytes over
the maximum capacity that you can fit on a regular DVD.
So I went in and deleted a couple of things so that it would fit on
this regular disc right here, because I don't have any dual-layer DVDs
and the nearest store that had one was like 45 minutes away and of course
the discs were like frickin' expensive.
Now if you're wondering why I even went through all of this instead of just creating a
bootable USB drive from the ISO image?
Believe me, I did try that, multiple times,
with multiple different pieces of software, but unfortunately despite
everything that I tried, I was not able to properly make this into
a bootable, uh, piece of restore media from the ISO image.
It's certainly possible, though, that it is possible but I did
speak to the guy who originally archived the installation media that I talked about
in the first video and he said that despite his best efforts
he had issues getting this to work as well.
So, I'm just going to let *USB clatters on desktop*
the USB drive win that one for now
because I already had all this stuff lying around anyway so we're just gonna
go this route. It'll work just fine. Hopefully!
But first I want to give a huge thanks to today's sponsor Linode
for continuing to support shenanigans like this on the channel.
I'll be talking more about them later on.
But for now, let's go ahead and adjust the camera and everything,
and get this thing restored back to factory settings.
"Removable medium is inserted". Hooray. So the drive works.
That's wonderful.
So, we're just going to log out of Raspberry Pi OS here and reboot,
and boot up from the DVD and go through this restore process.
Now, just to be honest here, I have done this a couple of times
in a virtual machine when I first found the image online.
I think it was actually before I even had the Disney Netpals in my
possession because I wanted to explore the software
and get familiar with some of the things that,
you know, Disney slash Asus put on here.
It is a fairly straightforward restore process; in fact
it utilizes a Symantec Ghost image.
And that's the neat thing too — all the stuff that I had to remove to make this image
fit on this DVD don't actually affect the restore process whatsoever.
On the DVD, on the root of it there is a
software folder and inside of that are all of the Asus programs that come
pre-installed but they're already contained in that Ghost image, obviously.
So the programs in that folder were for if you, say, accidentally uninstalled
the trial of Norton Antivirus — God forbid — that came with your Netpal
and wanted to reinstall it — also God forbid- Well you could do that just by
putting in the restore media, browsing to that software folder, going into the Norton
folder, and running the executable from there. You don't have to
go through the entire restore process again.
So, yeah. We're just going to hit OK here.
It asks us, you know, Do you want to restore? And then,
"Are you sure?" Yes, we want to restore.
And we'll see Symantec Ghost launch here momentarily.
There it is!
And if you're wondering what specifically I removed from that folder,
well one of the things was Norton Antivirus.
I also got rid of the Skype installer and
a couple of the pieces of Asus bloatware that were in there as well
that, I mean you wouldn't really use- I mean, okay, maybe you would.
If you really wanted to use them, you know, you can because, like I said
it doesn't affect the restore image here.
So, anyway, it's telling us to "Please wait" so we're gonna wait.
Unfortunately there's no progress bar or anything
so we can't actually see how long that it's going to take.
And there we go. It says it's finished, asks us to remove the DVD.
Ah, the glorious Windows XP boot screen.
It just celebrated its 21st anniversary of the general availability.
Depending on when I upload this it's either, like a day ago, or a couple days ago, or-
Yeah I don't know exactly when this video is going to go out.
But, yeah, Windows XP: 21 years old,
it's kind of nuts to, to think about. But.
Yeah, so here's, uh, Symantec Ghost once again. It has to
go through this and, uh, and do some more restore things before it
properly boots into Windows XP so we'll let it do that.
Reboot! All right.
[♫ title.wma ♫]
There we go.
So the sound drivers ARE set up properly, isn't that wonderful. And that is
what you would expect here.
But, yeah.
"Welcome to Microsoft Windows", of course this is going to be Asus-ified.
So, "Thank you for purchasing this computer from ASUS
featuring Microsoft Windows XP."
All right. So.
We got some additional options here...
Your system settings... and then like, there's a point where you got to
of course agree to the Asus license agreement as well,
so yeah, here's that. We're going to accept both of the license agreements.
Of course, reading them 100 percent, fully.
We're not going to bother with the automatic updates.
We're going to call this- uh, what's a good name here?
Uh, we'll just say NETPAL. Why not.
Computer description... not going to bother with that.
All right...
Come on, you can do it, you can do it...
Uh, no, we're not connected to the internet right now.
No I don't want to bother registering with Microsoft.
And... we'll just do M for the username.
All right, are you guys ready to experience the most magical computer on Earth?
I know I am.
I mean it's not like I've *chuckles* taken a look at this
I don't know how many times already, but.
Yeah I- I definitely want to dive into the original Parental Control software, because
that was the one thing that we didn't take a in-depth look at in the original video.
I, I did record some footage and overlay it into the first video,
and kind of talked about some of the things you can do with it. But,
we're going to actually go through the process of creating a user account with it
and, you know, showing off how it replaces Explorer, and the
limitations that you're able to set up for presumably your, your kid who would be using this.
Or multiple children if you, you know
had this be like a shared computer between people.
And it actually starts the Parental Control software
right when you log in for the first time. This is it. So it says "Welcome!
Press start to begin", okay.
So you press start. We're going to create a new user.
I don't know, John. Okay.
Yeah, and you see that you've got the choice between Windows User Pictures
and Disney Pictures. They've got a- a plethora of photos in here of various
Disney characters so we're gonna select- oh, why don't we go with Eve here.
So we'll select Eve. You can set a password if you want.
And just like in the Windows User Account panel
in Control Panel, you can change the user picture, rename, or change the password.
But you have this additional option of choosing a Desktop Environment. So you could
could go with the Standard Desktop, which it will say that it
"gives User access to Windows XP, this option does NOT include filters or restrictions".
So, theoretically you could go through and make standard user accounts
with this program as well, but of course the, the added benefit
you get is choosing the Disney Desktop Environment, which replaces Windows Explorer
and comes with limitations you can set up of how long you want
people to be logged in, what programs you want them to be able to launch.
We'll click on NEXT and this is where you choose the approved programs.
So by default it's got all of the Disney programs in here, so, you know,
Mix Central, Disney Pix — we took a look at these two programs in the first video.
We also have some additional stuff- FunCam,
which ties into the Parental Control software. In fact if we go into All Programs here
under Easybits for Kids — which is the name of the Parental Control software — you've got
the internet browser, the email client, the Windows Explorer file browser replacement,
and the FunCam program which is just a piece of webcam software. So. Yeah.
In addition to that you also have WordPad, Sound Recorder,
um, again some Disney stuff, Minesweeper, Pinball, but you could also add, like, let's say
you wanna let them run Adobe Reader. And there it is. Let's say you want to add
Movie Maker, we can do that. We can add PowerPoint Viewer, why not.
So yeah, just a single click on these will add them and then I think if you
were to click on, like Adobe Reader here...
and then, yeah, "Remove This Title". So you could remove- let's say
we don't want them accessing Adobe Reader.
So yeah. You can set that up. You can go to NEXT, and this is where
you can set restrictions for when certain programs will be allowed to be launched.
So let's say, Pinball. I only want them to be able to play Pinball on Sunday.
So let's say I want to get rid of every other day of the week, at every other time.
Yeah, so you can go through, set all these restrictions up however you want,
and then it tells you down here, "Programs started before blocked times
are not subject to restriction." So yeah, that's a way of bypassing it. If you just
know to launch the program before the blocked time period starts,
it'll just stay open. It's not going to just close the program when it gets to a certain time.
So we'll just hit NEXT here.
I mean I'm sure you get the idea there. You can configure internet settings
and go in here... and you know modify- this is just the standard
Windows Internet Settings panel, so you can go through here and
modify these settings to your liking.
And we'll hit NEXT.
And then it just brings you back here to the initial screen, so we'll hit FINISH.
And this is very important too, you want to make sure you set a
Master Password. We'll just, uh, do 'mjd'.
I'll show you how that ties into the interface once we log into the other account.
So, we're going to log off of my account here- we'll just Switch User,
and now you see there's this other account here with the Eve profile picture.
So we'll log in.
[♬ cheerfully chiming music ♫]
Oooh, there it is. So, yeah- oh, well that's not supposed to-
*laughs* That is not supposed to happen. You're not supposed to be able to access
the Start menu. So that's, uh, that's great.
I guess maybe that was because it was doing the initial setup.
You know, like Windows was setting up preferences for the account,
and normally it does open the Start menu, that's right.
Like when you log into an account for the first time?
You can't access the Start menu. I can press the Windows key all I want,
nothing's going to happen. It has blocked that.
I don't think you can even press control-alt-delete.
Yeah, you can't open up Task Manager.
So they have a lot of restrictions in place to make sure that you can't
bypass the Disney Desktop Environment here.
There is a replacement for the Start menu, though, and that is if you
click down here you've got, you know, some options here about Disney Desktop.
"Return to Windows", which will ask you for the Master Password
if you want to close out of the Disney Desktop software.
You can start your screen saver, terminate your program- and very interestingly
they've got hardware stats in here.
Your battery level, memory usage, CPU usage,
and, you know, how much space free you've got on your hard drive.
Which I find kind of nice that they've got right here in this menu.
Of course as a kid you won't really know what any of this means, I'm sure?
I mean, maybe if you- if you were a little bit older
perhaps you- you might but, uh,
yeah I find that interesting that they've got that in there.
So yeah, we'll just close out of that.
And this is your, your Dock down here which has all the
programs that you're allowed to launch.
So we can access the web browser here- We'll just start with that, why not.
The web browser is extremely basic.
Of course we're not connected to the internet, but
you can't actually, like type in a web address.
You are only able to go to specific pages — we'll come back to this in a moment here —
that your parent or whoever would set in the Favorites here. So you can click on Favorites
and it will bring up all of the allowed websites that you can go to.
But if you want to add something to it, you just click on this option up
here — it'll ask you for the Master Password so you enter that —
and then you get an address bar here that you can, you know,
go to like google.com — if we were connected to the internet we could —
and then you can also- Say you want to add Google to the Favorites,
so, this- it comes up with this "Parent Alert: Please read this online safety message
before adding any websites to your Favorites List! Once you add a website to your Favorite List,
the Disney Desktop browser online protection will be disabled for that site,
so your child will be able to access all the content on that site.
You should never add a new website to your Favorite List unless you
have reviewed the site and are comfortable with your child viewing
all the content available on that site." So.
Yeah, you would hit OK, and then it would say "Added to Favorites"
and, you know, you can actually name it Google here,
and... "Make available to all users, enable all pages within this website,
Approval of this site expires"- so you could also set like,
temporary approval if you only wanted to allow access to a site for, like, one day,
or one week you can set that there.
And then you just, I believe, click on... this here?
And there you go. Now we go into Favorites. Yeah, there it is, Google.
And then once you want to get out of the Parental... mode here you just hit LOG OUT
and then it'll ask you for the Master Password again once you click on there, so.
Yeah, that's a, a common theme with all these programs. And this interface,
too, with these b- large buttons up here.
I mean if you watch the original video you'll know that in Disney Pix
and in the Mix Central software, it was kind of the same thing.
You had these large buttons to navigate around the program. So.
Yeah, it makes sense, you know, you just want to keep it simple
for the, the kids who'll be using this. So,
yeah I don't know what- like, what is this here? Is this, um...
Oh, these are some of the included games! Okay.
This right here I believe is the... Okay, yeah, calculator-
FancyCalc, Ooh. So you got a calculator.
You've got like a sticky notes program thing- Easy Notes. You know,
you can enter in some text here... you know, this is where you, you create the note.
So you can't just like click on here and like edit the note in real time you have to
click on it, it'll open the program then you can make a new note here...
and then add that, apply and then close out of it and then that note will be on the desktop as well.
So, there you go.
This one here is, I think like a puzzle.
So you can move it around here...
Um, evidently you can't move it like over here.
I guess this area is like, reserved for icons. Is that the way it is with everything? Yeah.
So you can't move that over there.
And, yeah, it's like a, you know, it just scrambles it and you- you gotta just, y'know,
push the pieces around to, to make the puzzle.
So you got like a- a couple games here. I think this is just the clock.
Yeah, this is another game, it's like a matching thing.
You've got... what is this, table tennis? Oh wow.
Yeah, and it's cool that they're all in like these little mini windows.
They almost are like Gadgets.
And then you can personalize your interface too, and apply some Desktop themes.
So in addition to the Hyperdesk themes that you can get access to from
the standard Windows interface, you also have these additional themes
for the Disney interface, and you can also disabl- oh they are,
they are actually called Gadgets, look at that.
So you can enable some additional Gadgets, so say you don't want any of these,
we can just uncheck all that. And say you want, like My Pictures,
and say we maybe want to add this again... and you got some Tray skins as well.
That's actually nice. So we can maybe, add like this one and let's apply
maybe the, the Cars theme. And we'll hit OK.
And then it will apply that for us, so there you go.
And now you've got the My Pictures thing down here, which is just a little
Gadget that will shuffle between pictures.
I guess let's take a look at...
we've got FunCam but we also have Disney Email. Because of course every
every kid's favorite thing to do is, uh, launch an email client here.
"Welcome to Disney Email, Do you want to set up your mail account now?"
Yeah, so you would need to have a parent to do this or someone who knows
the Master Password because it asks you for that, and then it's
pretty much just a standard, you know, email setup procedure here you have to go through.
Once you set that up then your, your mail would would show in here.
And I guess we can also take a look at the FunCam program 'cause I've not
messed around with this yet so I'm kind of curious to see, like, what you can do.
So. Yeah, there it is. Just like, you know, a view of the webcam.
So the little light comes on up there as you can see.
And, so, you know, we can take a photo
aaand we can add some wonderful effects, I'm sure. "To apply effects, use your mouse
to draw a line", okay. So we can draw a line that's going to warp the image.
We can, uh, we can twist it.
Like... oh yeah you can probably do a lot- *laughs*
You can do some great stuff to this. Blur it. And you can make it grayscale.
So yeah that's definitely a nice piece of art. We're gonna save that. That is, uh, beautiful.
So yeah. It's just like a little, you know, webcam. You can
mess around with it and do whatever you want kind of thing.
Are th- are there any settings in here? Let's see.
"Clear image cache on exit", okay.
"Use recent device", um... Oh yeah, so if you had like a, an external webcam,
uh, you could, you know, set that up in here but, I mean I'm sure
you'd just want to use the internal one.
And you can adjust some settings as well, like the brightness. We can, you know,
lower that if we want, or make it like super bright.
You can adjust the contrast... the hue... So yeah you can get kind of artistic in here.
Maybe make the saturation super high. Maybe lower the sharpness.
You know, increase the gamma there...
Yeah, you can- *laugh* you can definitely, uh... screw around with this.
But yeah, so that is the, the little FunCam webcam program.
I will have this restore media linked down below.
And while you're down there in the description box, be sure to check out
today's video sponsor, Linode, who I want to thank for making this episode possible.
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It's a great way to get started with Cloud Computing
and I really appreciate them for their continued support of these
vintage computing antics that we get into on this channel.
So be sure to check them out,
and huge thanks again to Linode for making today's episode possible.
Well, that's pretty much it, guys.
That is the restore process from start to finish here on the Disney Netpal.
I hope you guys enjoyed this video.
If you did be sure to give it a thumbs up, get subscribed, all that good stuff,
and as always I want to thank you all so much for watching
and I'll see you in the next video.
[♫ calm music ♫]
◢ Captioned by: Pineapples Foster Media Services ◣ ◹ pineapples.foster@gmail.com ◸