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W2K Pro Security

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by ltheodoru

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I have an NT 4 domain, and would like to install W2K Pro desktops with NT 4 group policies. This is a high school, and the little darlings seem to have a contest going to see how many computers they can make non-funtional before the end of the year.I have my own goals. One, I need to prevent the installation of software by students but seem to be unable to do so in the group policies. I have tried purchasing software that restricts the students, but the software causes as many problems as it solves and the students have figured out how to get by it anyway. Two, with 800 students, I don't want to store local copies of profiles on lab computers because of disk space. NT 4 roaming profiles do not give an option to delete local copies of profiles. Three, I need to keep traffic to a minimum because of the share numbers of computers on a 10BT network. Any suggestions or how to's would be much appreciated.

9 replies

by ntoz

The only suggestion that I can offer is to use a utility like scriptit. As you know, NT 4.0 doesnt have group policies, rather system policies the older step sister of GPO's.

by mikel~t

With a security policy in windows 2000, you can prevent users from installing anything...which includes software, games, updates, and so forth. Within that policy, you can establish how long roaming policies are kept, or whether they are kept at all...you can specify that the my documents folder is located on a server, rather than having the entire folder follow each student from computer to computer when they access their profile. You can disable just about everything you are describing, andprevent the little darlings from doing anything you don't want them to...you can even audit the heck out of everything to see just what they are up to.

grab a book...it can give you greater depth than I can in this little window.

Anyway, hope this helps.

Mike

by dc1

Unfortunately W2K doesn't recognize NT4 policies. Using the Security templates that come with 2000 I am sure you will be able to customize a security that meets your needs. Once you have one configured export it to a file and then import it on therest of your PC's.

by charloff

Regarding the "roaming profiles" part of the question, if you set it up for "mandatory profiles" instead, it forces a fresh download of the profile at each logon. (Any changes a user makes to the local copy of a mandatory profile are discarded at log out.) To convert a roaming profile to mandatory, rename NTUser.DAT to NTUser.MAN in the top-level profile subdirectory, add the ".MAN" extension to the name of the user's folder under %systemroot%\profiles (making the name username.MAN) and verify the correct account profile path in User Manager.

You can also force the same mandatory profile to a group of users by pointing them all at the same profile subdirectory.

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