Setting Up Computers With Limited Access/To Be Trouble Free??

blobert

Hello Folks,

I'm setting up some PCs to be used by the residents in the centre in I work in. There are 8 in total, 4 very crappy ones that just about run Windows XP and 4 new P4 Dells that have just arrived. I'm going to set up 4 (probably the newer ones) for Internet use and all 8 with MS Office for ECDL training/computer classes.

Here's the problem: The 4 basic computers that I've already set up get wrecked very quickly, all kinds of spyware and junk software is installed by the people using them (most know very little about computers) and they become unusable within a few weeks.

I thought I'd hit the jackpot when I found a program called "Deep Freeze", that reverts a computer to it's original state whenever you restart. Unfortunately the computers keep crashing with this installed so it doesn't seem to be the solution I hoped for.

I want to find out what my options are for trouble free computing (at the moment I've having to reinstall windows every month or so which is very time consuming). Here are my questions/problems:

(1) How do I stop people from being allowed to install programs/rubbish? Does only allowing people "Guest" Access to XP allow this, I don't think it does. It there a better way?

(2) I was thinking of using Norton Ghost to make a backup image of one of the computers after I've set it up right and just revert to this whenever things go wrong, is this easy to do and a good idea?

(3) Is there an easy way of disabling Internet Access on the 4 computers I don't want to be able to connect to the net? This doesn't seem to be an option in XP, I've tried just putting it crazy proxy settings in IE, it works, but is there a better way?

Any advice on this would be much appreciated.

Thanks,

Robert

garred

Strange that Deep Freeze is crashing the machines as it does wonders for the sites we support. Another product along the same lines as Deep Freeze is Juzt Reboot. This differs from Deep Freeze as that it is hardware based and protects not only the os but also the bios. Its a pci card with sofware loaded at the bios level, not on the os. Maybe give this a whirl.

Khannie

Norton ghost is an excellent backup utility.

You can restrict hdd write access for sure. I've never had to restrict access, but I'm sure plenty of people here can tell you how to do that (this seems like the best idea tbh).

blobert

Thanks for the advice guys, please keep it coming.

Can anyone tell me:

How do I stop people from being allowed to install programs/rubbish? Does only allowing people "Guest" Access to XP allow this, I don't think it does. It there a better way?

Thanks

SouperComputer

you can create a standard user account, rather than the retarded way windows puts them as admin by default. Even as a guest though, you can install software with some trickery.

For blocking internet, just put them on static IP, but leave the gateway & DNS blank.

Perhaps look at some web-café software, as a lot of it ties down the most common issues without too much intervention.

So-called "Magic Cards" are another option.

srdb20

Assuming you have a firewall here:


setup a rule on your firewall to stop internet traffic on port 80, or as Soupercomputer was saying.

Are the 4 older machines networked together?

Norton Ghost is a sweet app it'll save you alot of time and effort restoring the machines if needs be.

SouperComputer

Acronis True image would be a better option than Ghost for a few reasons:

1. You can create a hidden recovery partition to store the images.
2. The above partition can be invoked for recovery with a keystroke on startup
3. You can make incremental images with Acronis, great for rolling back or forward with updates, extra apps etc etc. This can get time consuming even when the images are only a couple of months old.

Blowfish

Both xp pro and win 2k have far more/better options for restricting users, you can prevent them having access to the c drive at all if you want.

Orion

If the machines are XP Pro run GPEDIT.MSC. You'll find lots of configuration settings here- including preventing access to removable media (cdrom and fdd), blocking internet access, etc. Only local admins can change these settings so rename the administrator account and password it - then create accounts for the residents as Normal accounts.

If they're running XP Home it's not as easy but everything is configurable in the registry. Let me know and I'll get the reg settings for preventing access to removable media etc for you if you need them.

Spocker

You could try software called SiteKiosk - some info from their blurb:

SiteKiosk wrote:

SiteKiosk is the ideal solution for Windows 98/ME/2000/XP to present web-based content (HTML, Flash, PDF, videos, etc.) and applications in a safe and stable way on public access terminals with or without access to the
Internet.

You can use SiteKiosk to individually restrict access to Web sites, the operating system, system settings, and applications.

.

The full document is here and the software runs on Windows 95 up (albeit an older, no longer supported version, 4.xx)

S.

chopster

Xp with service pack 2 has a little known program that works in a similiar way to the program 'Deep Freeze' . In fact it's so little known that i've forgotten its name lol . Maybe someone else can enlighten a bit further before i can rake it from the rusty vaults of my brain.


......aaahhhh found it , it's called the Windows XP shared Computer Toolkit
have a look here http://www.tweakxp.com/Article37921.aspx.
Then download it from the MS download centre http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=7256D456-E3DA-42EA-857D-92B716077A84&displaylang=en