I know that holding the power button down for five seconds is supposed to bypass software and shut the computer down, but I was wondering if there was anyway to bypass or disable this feature. Is there anyway to stop the computer from automatically turning off after the power button is held down for five seconds? Is there anyway to seriously delay the shut down (increase the time that it must be held down from five to say ten, fifteen, or twenty seconds)? There have been times when my computer has frozen and it has taken much longer than five seconds to hard reboot, which leads me to believe that there is some software involvement in the hard boot request. Does anyone know how to disable this request? I am asking specifically for XP and Vista and on a laptop that has no access to the BIOS. Thanks for any help that you can offer.

My goal is to thwart the mischievous three and a half year old twins in my house who enjoy holding down the power button on my computer. I often leave the computer unattended as it completes compiling tasks, and it is not possible to keep the kids away from it and putting something over the power button has proved ineffective. I want to make a little program that runs and disables shutdown via holding down the power button. It would make my life for the next several years MUCH easier.