# History — the 2001 VB6 original

This directory is the source code of the kiosk browser Jeremy Anderson
wrote in Visual Basic 6 in December 2001, at age eighteen, while on
co-op from school for his first employer — a Boston-area MSP and
programming company that serviced medical offices. It solved one
problem: patients waiting in a lobby would misuse the computer, so the
computer needed to become a single-purpose, escape-proof browser.

It ran in that lobby for years. Twenty-five years later it became
[Vestibule](../README.md). Nothing in Vestibule's build, runtime, or
packaging depends on this directory — it is a non-shipping historic
artifact, kept for provenance.

## What is here

Three snapshots of the same project, in the directory arrangement they
arrived in:

| Directory | What it is | Date |
|---|---|---|
| `vb6-2001/original/` | The earliest iteration. The unlock code is read from `C:\windows\system\smt.txt`; a first-run setup screen lets the operator set it. | Dec 11–17, 2001 |
| `vb6-2001/` (top level) | The lobby build. The unlock code is hardcoded in the form source; home page `www.msn.com`. The `f`-suffixed files are a later development line with the browser-disable step commented out for testing. | Dec 12–18, 2001 |
| `vb6-2001/Final/` | The shipped build: the IEXPLORE.EXE step is active again, wrapped in an error-53 retry loop for machines where the file was already gone. Includes `frmBrowserfFloppy.frm`, a self-demo variant that navigates to `a:\description.html` with a blank unlock code, and `frmMain.frm` ("Reloader"), a leftover test stub. | Dec 18, 2001 – Jan 3, 2002 |

`description.html` is the 2001-era readme, typos intact.

## How it worked

- A maximized, chromeless VB6 form hosting the Internet Explorer COM
  control (`SHDOCVW.DLL`), `ControlBox = False`, `WindowState = 2`.
- `SystemParametersInfo(97, True)` — the undocumented Win9x
  screensaver flag — disabled Ctrl+Alt+Del, Alt+Tab, and the Windows
  key.
- `SetWindowPos` with `HWND_TOPMOST` kept the window on top.
- The menu hid by default and appeared when the mouse touched the top
  edge of the screen (`picAddress_MouseMove`, `Y <= 10` twips) — the
  gesture Vestibule still ships.
- On startup it renamed `IEXPLORE.EXE` to `IEXPLORE.bak` and deleted
  the original: an escaped user found no browser to escape to. On
  unlock it copied the file back.
- The unlock delay was a `GoTo` counting loop burning the CPU for half
  a second. The lock screen used Comic Sans.

It refused to run on NT, 2000, or XP — the screensaver trick does
nothing on NT-family kernels, and the About box says so.

## The "System Security 1.5" strings

The lock screen and About box carry the name and description of a
sibling application — a standalone system-lockdown tool the author
wrote alongside this one. The browser reused that app's lock-screen
UI wholesale, branding included. The `SmtSysMan` variable names and
the `smt.txt` unlock-code file belong to that lineage as well. The
strings are left in place: they are what the shipped binary displayed.

## Scrub log (2026-08-24)

The code is preserved byte-for-byte except for the following, applied
so the artifact carries no employer, school, or client identifiers:

| Change | Where |
|---|---|
| Employer-branded project filenames renamed to the neutral `LobbyBrowser*`; project name and output executable inside each project file renamed to match; SourceSafe section headers follow the filenames | all `.vbp`, `.vbw`, `MSSCCPRJ.SCC` |
| Company version string (the school's initials) → empty | every `.vbp` |
| Hardcoded unlock code (the employer's initials) → `"REDACTED"` | `frmBrowser.frm`, `frmBrowserf.frm`, `Final/frmBrowserf.frm` |
| Employer name in the 2001 readme → "my co-op employer, a Boston-area MSP and programming company" | `description.html` |
| The floppy self-demo form's filename (which named a school) → `frmBrowserfFloppy.frm` | `Final/` |

Three files were excluded and are not in this tree:

- The compiled `.exe` — it embeds the original project name, the
  school company string, and the unlock code in its version resource;
  a binary cannot be scrubbed without a rebuild, and the artifact is
  the source.
- `IEXPLORE.bak` — a copy of Microsoft's Internet Explorer executable
  captured by the rename step. It is Microsoft's binary, not authored
  code, and does not ship here.
- `test.txt` — an empty scratch file.

## Viewing it

The `.frm`/`.bas`/`.vbp` files are plain text and read fine anywhere.
Opening the project requires the Visual Basic 6 IDE, and running the
result requires Windows 95, 98, 98 SE, or ME — by design, it does
nothing on NT-family kernels, which includes every Windows since.