On 15 Mar 2005 at 16:49, linuxgirlie wrote:
with Windows 2000 and Windows XP workstations, along with being able to remotely lock down workstations (ensures that its almost impossible for a student to mess them up). I don't know how
We have know remote lock-down, though we are working on remote software deployment which is in testing here at DGSB. We only have 200 machines here at the moment, and I just put in a Group Policy and lock down the C drive etc etc, its alot tighter than it was but how tight can you make windows?!?
Surprisingly enough, you can do a phenomenal job of locking up windows. Credit where credit is due, Microsoft have made Windows 2k and XP extremely flexible on this regard. Win98 could be locked down just as hard, through judicious use of Policy Editor, but due to its single user approach made life extremely hard to unlock (had to set Policy Editor to be windows shell instead of explorer.) 2k and XP could be locked down at a workstation end, by locking down the workstations 'user' level rights, but that just leaves room for them to be unlocked by students somehow and remain unlocked. As it stands, when the workstation logs in to the network (which unless they know the administrator account password, it has to do) a dynamic user is created by Novell on the workstation with rights that we've chosen, in a manner much like using Policy Editor on Win98. This can be done by user, group or container. All aspects of machine configuration can be set in that policy file, from screen resolution to screensaver, to which aspects of windows configuration they can see (just screen res, for accessability purposes). Students are users so have no registry rights, they can't add their own programs as users don't have install rights, nor would it work as their profile is deleted automatically by novell on logout.. and so on. When we made the transition to 2k from 98 we saw support issues plummet by about 3/4 across campus due to how much we could remotely lock down the workstations. ----- Paul Graydon Network Technician Haywards Heath College http://www.hhc.ac.uk (01444) 456281 "Joy is not in things; it is in us." Richard Wagner