Locking Down a Shared Public Computer

  • Thread starter Thread starter Michael Rich
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M

Michael Rich

From: "Michael Rich" <mrich@michaelrich.com>
Subject: Locking Down a Shared Public Computer
Date: Monday, March 15, 2004 11:46 PM

I am involved in an organization that has many part-time volunteers working
in shifts. They mainly use the computer to browse the internet for
information, and to play games when they are not answering the phone.

I'd like to lock these computers down - preventing them from installing
programs, and I'd like to restore key features (desktop background, Start
Menu items, etc.) when a volunteer logs in (they use one common login).

I don't necessarily want to prevent them from changing anything on the
computers (except to prevent new hardware from being loaded). I just want it
restored to the previous state when someone else logs in.

Can someone suggest a management toolkit or set of Windows programs that
would allow me to do this?

Thanks;
Michael
 
Try a software package called "DEEPFREEZE" from http://www.faronics.com.
This software "locks" your
hard drive so that any and ALL changes made by the user are deleted when the
machine reboots. We use it
for our public access pc's and we haven't had a service call since we
installed it on them. Users can change
ANYTHING they want, install Internet garbage and even DELETE the windows
system directory. The
DEEPFREEZE software will restore the original system. We have ours set up to
automatically reboot every
morning at 5:00 a.m. and 90 minutes after the last user logs off the
machine. Makes maintenance a breeze because
there is none except to install new applications as needed. You can
"unfreeze" the hard drive, install what you need
to and then "freeze" the drive again.....ZERO service calls due to viruses,
downloaded Internet garbage and so on
since we installed DEEPFREEZE.......


Cwa........
 
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