Disable Some Program

If you are using XP as the base computers you can set up the user accounts to be restricted so that a member of the general public is unable to alter anything on the system.

But before you do this you'll need to create a password on the Administrator Account and then you can create a User account with Limited rights that the system can log onto without a password.

To do this open the Control Panel then chose User Accounts then change an Account, on the default account create a password and you can use the same password on every computer but you'll need to make it long at least 25 charters long and mix in some letters & numbers and don't forget to write it down in a safe place where it can be easily found when required.

Once you have done this you can then can create another user account that is used to log into the system by the general public.

Of if you want to be a bit more sneaky you can boot the system in [b]Safe Mode[/b] and log on as the Admin and create a password there while you leave the default account alone other than changing the user rights to Limited.

If you do it that way when a member of the public reboots the computer they will only see the default user account as a possible log in account and with Limited user rights they will be unable to change anything.

If you have a server application you could also achieve the same results with a combination of Group Policies and Active Directory but to do that you would need a Windows 2003 Server Platform or if you are really brave you could perform a similar setup on a Linux Computer and restrict the access to the Windows Terminals.

Personally I would have thought it cheaper to have a decent server with thin Clients as workstations so that the users can not mess with the settings. You could have one massive big Linux/ BSD Server and all the thin clients that you want and not run into any Licensing restrictions that MS put in place.

But if you already have the system in place your only option is to switch all the users to Limited User Rights that way they can not mess with the computers anywhere near as much.

Col