locking down a laptop for a demo

whosurpaddy

im settting up a couple laptops for displaying demos at a conference. is there a way i can lock em down to only have access to a certain folder and not be able to snoop around the machines?

Capt'n Midnight

Which OS ?
eg: if Win9x / Me then not really. (you could change the shell to the app you want to run - but they could just F8 on boot up.)

I've never been big into Policy Editor - but it means you modify a user account to disable RUN etc. from the start menu. - but there are so many exploits to this...

If you are handing the pc to someone to else to demo they will have physical access - lots of things from a Dos 5 boot disk with NTFSDOS to Knopppix boot CD will give them untracable read access to everything on the system except for Encrypted NTFS 5 folders. - so you would have to disable FDD,CD,USB in BIOS and pnp detect thingy in services and autorun etc.

I'm not a fan of encrypted folders - since you are stuffed if you loose the PW - if you go that way make sure you are service packed to the hilt and make a password recovery disk , that works for folders too ?
probably best to copy the files from \windows\repair too so you can restore the security info..

Pacifico

Can you not just "hide" the folders you dont want 'em using?

whosurpaddy

forgot to mention OS is xp (probly all pro, although maybe home too.)


im not worried about em using boot disks and things as our people will be near enough, and its not kids were demo-ing to, so i cant see that being a prob.

boss just mentioned it to me to see if it could easily be done.

i was just thinking of hiding the taskbar and not displaying desktop icons.as what i will be displaying will be in IE and run in fullscreen so their should be no reason for em to stray outside of that


as regards just hiding folders i dont want em to use, thats not really practical as ive said i only want em to see one thing on the machine, and the machines setup needs to be as quick as poss as ive to do a few of em.

Stephen

run the demonstration under a user account with minimal (ie guest) permissions so that they can do the least possible damage

silverside

Personally I would wipe the machines and put a clean install of XP on, then just install your demo software. I assume all the laptops are the same model so you should be able to make a HD OS image that you can just slot into the machines. Of course this takes time but if you have a competent IT guy he should be able to do this once and save you time in the long run.

whosurpaddy

nah its not an option. not a large scale thing were just borrowing a couple laptops for the demo.