How to disable Cyber Patrol

These instructions will not work with Cyber Patrol for the Macintosh, or with the proxy server version of Cyber Patrol. To make sure your computer has Cyber Patrol installed on it, see our page about how to determine which blocking software is installed on your computer.

(To disable Cyber Patrol for the Macintosh, click here. Otherwise, to disable Cyber Patrol for Windows, keep reading.)

Recommended method (see also a list of alternate methods):
Download a program called CPCrack here. If you run this program on a machine with Cyber Patrol installed, it will display the Cyber Patrol headquarters password on your screen. (Please note that CPCrack will not work with versions of Cyber Patrol downloaded after November 1998; at that point, Cyber Patrol changed the encryption scheme for their passwords so that CPCrack would no longer work with their program. We are working on a version that also works with the newer version of Cyber Patrol.)

Once you have obtained the password, log in to Cyber Patrol by clicking on the Cyber Patrol icon on the taskbar, and entering your password for the HQ password. With Cyber Patrol open, go to File and pick Deputy Bypass. The Cyber Patrol icon on the taskbar will now be marked with a red X to indicate that Cyber Patrol has been disabled. To re-enable Cyber Patrol, go to File and select Deputy Bypass again (which should now have a check mark next to it) to turn off the bypass.

If you're interested in how the Cyber Patrol password cracker works, you can read the explanation of how Cyber Patrol encrypts the master password, and how CPCrack reverses the decryption to recover it.

Alternate methods

Method 1

Follow these instructions to configure Cyber Patrol so that it will still be run but not block anything. cyber.bin and cyber.not are the files that store the list of sites that Cyber Patrol blocks; these steps replace those lists with an empty list.
  1. Back up the files c:\patrol\cyber.bin and c:\patrol\cyber.not to some other location on the computer (or just rename them with ".bak" on the end of their names -- although this will of course make it easy for other people to find them).
  2. Create a zero-byte file called cyber.not in the c:\patrol\ directory. You can do this by running Notepad, picking "Save", and saving the blank file as an empty file at c:\patrol\cyber.not. Notepad usually adds ".txt" to the end of a file first though, so if this happens, be sure to rename the file from cyber.not.txt to cyber.not.
  3. Restart Windows, without necessarily restarting your computer. You can do this by picking "Shut Down" from the Start Menu, selecting "Restart the computer", and holding down the Shift key when you click "OK". You can also restart your computer the usual way, but this is faster.
  4. Windows will re-start. When you get back into Windows, you will still not be able to access the Internet though; Cyber Patrol will think that "tampering" has occurred. A new cyber.bin file will have been created automatically in c:\patrol, slightly smaller than the old one. Do nothing, just continue.
  5. Re-start Windows again, as in the previous step. This time, you will be able to access the entire Internet.
This is an ideal solution you need uncensored Internet access while someone is looking over your shoulder, because the Cyber Patrol icon will remain on the taskbar to make it appear that it is still running. In fact, it is still running -- the only difference is that its list of blocked sites has been reduced to zero.

Method 2

Follow these instructions to permanently un-install Cyber Patrol from your machine:
  1. Remove the shortcut to "Cyber Patrol", if there is one, from the StartUp folder, usually located at
          C:\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\StartUp\
  2. Open the c:\windows\win.ini file and replace the line
          load=c:\patrol\cp.exe ic.exe
    with just
          load=
  3. Right-click on the file
          c:\windows\win.ini
    Select "Properties" and check the box for "read-only".
  4. Right-click on the file
          c:\windows\system\system.drv
    Select "Properties", and un-check the boxes for "hidden", "system" and "read-only".
  5. Right-click on the file
          c:\windows\system.386
    Select "Properties", and un-check the boxes for "hidden", "system" and "read-only".
  6. (This step only applies to versions of Cyber Patrol downloaded after November, 1998. If you try this step and you don't find what you're looking for, don't worry about it -- you probably just have an older version of Cyber Patrol on your machine.)
    Run Regedit (go to the Start Menu, select "Run...", and type "regedit,exe"). Moving around in RegEdit is a lot like moving around in Windows Explorer; you can think of "values" as being files, and think of "keys" as being folders, with sub-keys stored inside other keys, etc. Find these two values:
    • There should be a value in the key
      HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run
      called "FltProcess"; the value will be labeled "msinet.exe". Delete this value by clicking "FltProcess" and hitting Delete.
    • There should be a value in the key
      HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run
      also called "FltProcess" and also labeled "msinet.exe". Delete that "FltProcess" too.
  7. Restart the computer in DOS mode. Move to the
    c:\windows\system\ directory and type:
          move system.drv system.bak
          move ..\system.386 system.drv
  8. Type "win" to start Windows again. If it tells you "Windows is still running one or more MS-DOS based programs..." try typing "exit".
Cyber Patrol will now be disabled on your computer. Reverse all of the steps above to re-enable it.

Method 3

Click here for method 3. These instructions were mailed in by Jack Harris -- we're not sure if they work, but try them out, and if it works for you, send us an e-mail and let us know how it went!