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My computer starts up and you see the generic UBUNTU loading with the dots underneath and instead of going to a login it takes me straight to a Firefox window where i can not do anything. The computer is a ThinkCentre M55e (type 9637) that i received from a school as they where going to throw them out. I don't know the version of Ubuntu or much about the program itself, so some help would be much appreciated. I assume the lack of ability was to stop children from playing around on the desktop.

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    Well this is very little information to work with. Have you re-installed Ubuntu? That would be probably the easiest thing to get rid of all those "anti-tamper" settings, whithout knowing what they are. Jan 14, 2016 at 11:57
  • Thanks for your suggestion. As i said, i'm not too familiar with Linux, this is why i tried to install a version of windows onto the computer. when i put the CD in the drive and let the computer start up it would not start the installer. If you could give me some answers as to why this is and how i can fix this issue it would help.
    – user493123
    Jan 14, 2016 at 21:18
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    Possible duplicate of How do I reinstall Ubuntu? Jan 15, 2016 at 12:42

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As you said, this is a Linux machine which has been set up to allow users to surf the Internet and nothing else. Trying to find a way to disable this settings would take much, much more time than reinstalling the whole system, so I recommend the latter. Plus, you'll be free to have any Linux distro on your computer (not just that Ubuntu which is probably outdated).

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There are probably several ways to get rid of the kiosk mode (fullscreen browser and nothing else), depending on how it was set-up. But none of those are easy to explain here and easy to do for an absolute beginner (e.g., trying ctrl+alt+f1 to go to TTY and fix via terminal).

Reinstalling will be the easiest way and you'll also get a clean system.

There are plenty of good tutorials on how to install Ubuntu, which is really rather simple. Here is a good one with pictures: http://www.wikihow.com/Install-Ubuntu-Linux

And here at "How to install Ubuntu 14.04"

You seem to be stuck at Step 3 of the wikihow article. If your PC doesn't boot from the Live CD/USB Stick, you have to tell the BIOS/UEFI a different boot order. It's probably set-up to just pick the harddisk first. What key to press depends on your system, but there is often a message like "To interrupt normal boot press F1". Some systems have button for the Config menu and another one just for a quick boot order selection. F1, F2, Del etc. are often the keys. Just look closely at the first few screens after power-up and reset your PC if you miss it. Good luck ;)

(NB: if you google for the exact model you have, you'll probably find a guide how-to change boot sequence as well)

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