andy206uk — Tue, 18 Jan 2005 12:12:45 +0000

That sounds like what I'm looking for... I just found the website @ deepfreezeusa.com

I'll have a play tonight. Thanks dojo!

dojo — Tue, 18 Jan 2005 10:16:30 +0000

We use a program, deep freeze I guess it's called. At my work place we've got some very stupid people who make all sorts of mistakes and the admin just got enough with installing Windows every other day. so he put this soft on the system partition (c) and we've got no probs ever since. I understand it just "freezes" the configuration and if you want to install with it on, you can install, but on restart everything is lost. We haven't got any viruses since then

andy206uk — Tue, 18 Jan 2005 09:31:42 +0000

heh heh heh... good thinking!

Ashish — Tue, 18 Jan 2005 04:30:02 +0000

make em log in as guests..... that should solve the problem beautifully

openmind — Wed, 12 Jan 2005 16:44:41 +0000

Well first create a user by going to Adminstration Option > Computer Management > User and Groups and set the permission for that user

Then on any folder simply right click and select security and the user. That user will then have permission for that folder. To secure everything just take the user off the root folder.

Your disk does need to be formatted as NTFS though for this to work...

andy206uk — Wed, 12 Jan 2005 16:41:18 +0000

it's XP pro. I can't seem to see the permissions options. Do you know where I can find em?

openmind — Wed, 12 Jan 2005 10:11:10 +0000

Is it XP home or Pro?

What I did on my sons machine was set him up with a user account and then adjusted the permissions on all the folders so he could only read and execute not write/modify...

He still has access to certain folders but it was worth the effort...

Renegade — Wed, 12 Jan 2005 09:53:57 +0000

I don't actually think its possible on XP. Everyone and anyone can install programs. The problem is, even if there was a way, it would be something like stopping the registry from being edited. But, by doing that, a lot of programs won't work.

Think your stuck between a rock and a hard piece of code

andy206uk — Wed, 12 Jan 2005 08:35:06 +0000

I had thought about installing linux but one of my sisters is only in her early teens and I don't think she should cope with it.

XP does have users and I have set them all up with a none-admin account. The only problem is they can still install software which is what I desperatly want to prevent.

Abhishek Reddy — Tue, 11 Jan 2005 23:30:23 +0000

It's not horrible to lock down the computer that much. Unix and similar OSes do it all the time ("root" user). Cornerstone of security.

Win XP does have some sort of user management. Look in Control Panel > Users or something. I think you'll want Administrator to be at admin level and the rest at User or Guest or whatever it is. Poke around.

I don't know any additional programs to do it, but I'd guess there is software out there for it...

Good luck.