Disable CD-Writing for ordinary users

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Guest

we've got some new machines in our office setup, but all of them came with cd
writers instead of cd drives, anyway good for us, we want to disable cd
writing in all the systems, we just want the users to use it as cd drives. OS
is XP, even if admin disables the write option from cd drive properties, any
user can enable it.

so is there any workarounds?
 
What risks are you attempting to mitigate by disabling writing? If you're
worried about people copying data and taking it with them, there are many
other ways they can do that. For example, if you've got a decent speed Internet
connection, users with GMail accounts could quickly send 1 gigabyte of information
to themselves.

Steve Riley
(e-mail address removed)
 
Steve Riley said:
What risks are you attempting to mitigate by disabling writing? If you're
worried about people copying data and taking it with them, there are many
other ways they can do that. For example, if you've got a decent speed
Internet connection, users with GMail accounts could quickly send 1
gigabyte of information to themselves.

Steve Riley
(e-mail address removed)
Click to expand...


This is obviously an area where DRM will help... but unfortunately its not
used enough (for this anyway.)
~

Many organizations that are very concerned with security will not provide
Internet connections to their main network.

Anyway, I think the easiest way to try to address this is to disable the
IMAPI CD-BURNING COM SERVICE. Only an administrator would be able to
re-enable it. That, and don't install any CD burning software like Nero etc
(again, only an admin would be able to install this software.)

Also I guess it would also be a good idea to restrict USB memory devices:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/winxppro/maintain/sp2otech.mspx#ECAA
(available with XP SP2)
 
Ananth said:
we've got some new machines in our office setup, but all of them came with cd
writers instead of cd drives, anyway good for us, we want to disable cd
writing in all the systems, we just want the users to use it as cd drives. OS
is XP, even if admin disables the write option from cd drive properties, any
user can enable it.

so is there any workarounds?
Click to expand...

You can disable the entire device eaily enough,
but to remove just the burning capability I'd suggest
looking at using a different driver. The user will see
error messages, but you probably don't care too much
about that.
 
Thanks to all who replied.

Presently the device is disabled but we want users to use the CD-Writer as
CD Drive. I'll try what Colin suggested. What's DRM? I'll let you know as
soon as possible.

Steve, '@microsoft.com' well i'm not surprised by ur reply. Maybe you
didn't read the whole post. To make matters more clear... We are a production
house, and the new IBM's we have came with CR-Writers instead of CD-Drives,
and we don't want our users to copy any date out, the FDD's are disabled, the
systems are not connected to the Internet . Hope this helps.
 
Why not have IBM remove the CD writers and replace them with the drives that were ordered or listed on the spec sheet for the machine? Or replace the drives yourself? A CD-ROM is not a very expensive item and can usually be found on sale.

--
Just my 2¢ worth,
Jeff
__________In response to__________
| Thanks to all who replied.
|
| Presently the device is disabled but we want users to use the CD-Writer as
| CD Drive. I'll try what Colin suggested. What's DRM? I'll let you know as
| soon as possible.
|
| Steve, '@microsoft.com' well i'm not surprised by ur reply. Maybe you
| didn't read the whole post. To make matters more clear... We are a production
| house, and the new IBM's we have came with CR-Writers instead of CD-Drives,
| and we don't want our users to copy any date out, the FDD's are disabled, the
| systems are not connected to the Internet . Hope this helps.
|
|
 
Ananth said:
Thanks to all who replied.

Presently the device is disabled but we want users to use the CD-Writer
as
CD Drive. I'll try what Colin suggested. What's DRM? I'll let you know as
soon as possible.

Steve, '@microsoft.com' well i'm not surprised by ur reply. Maybe you
didn't read the whole post. To make matters more clear... We are a
production
house, and the new IBM's we have came with CR-Writers instead of
CD-Drives,
and we don't want our users to copy any date out, the FDD's are disabled,
the
systems are not connected to the Internet . Hope this helps.
Click to expand...

DRM is 'digital rights management'

Currently its used a lot for media files to prevent people from copying
their music and giving it to friends (example: iTunes) but it can also be
used to encrypt other files (like a Word doc) and then restrict who can read
it and who can make changes... so your users could access it at work, but if
they try to move it to their home computers, they would be unable to decrypt
it.

See
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/technologies/rightsmgmt/default.mspx
for Microsoft's product that can do this. It does require some planning and
some infrastructure on the backend.
 
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