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Maintaining PCs at work

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9 replies

by kateynoodle

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I work in a small office and I have been chosen as PC troubleshooter coz those grey boxes under the desks don't scare me!!. We have four PCs and two laptops and some staff members try to tweek the PCs with often disasterous results. Is there any way I can technically stop staff members from accessing the control panel, add/remove programmes, so that I can keep an eye on what goes on and comes off the PCS. We are not networked. We use Win98.
Any help will be rewarded
(with points!!)
Katey

9 replies

by cmann

Yes you can download the latest version of a program called xsetup from

http://www.xteq.com/downloads/

and then tell the program to hide the whole control panel all together or just the add/remove option. It also has alot of other very goodtweaks that you as the admin might use and be happy to know about. I give it a very good rating, ever since i found out about it i have always used it. the program is designed with many plugins and you can even create your own if you like that.

by kateynoodle

+Thanks for the answer. I tried to download X setup but without success, but found the prog on a magazine CD. All is now well in the office
xxx

by talli

While XSetup is indeed a great proggie, and is a must-have for every power user ,there r other solutions to your problem as well. For example ,Folder Guard ,available from WinAbility.com website allows u to also hide or make "read only" any resources/files/folders of your choice,restrict user access to Control Panel or any of it's applets or other resources. With it, u can protect files etc from being modified or otherwise affected by any application, such as Explorer, Office or even DOS promptinput.It provides password protection for any resource of your choice, user-dependant permissions, user validation at logon and more. (lol, I do not work for WinAbility, I just saw this little puppy in use).There r also programs like Norton DiskLock, that allow u to password-protect any number of files/folders or other resources on your PC/s. Believe me ,the list goes on and on...u'll just have to search the Web, test them all and make a final choice. Or-just convince the boss to upgrade to NT/2000 family, where user restriction is much more powerful.
HTH
Good luck.
Talli

by kateynoodle

+Thanks for the answer. I tried to download X setup but without success, but found the prog on a magazine CD. All is now well in the office
xxx

by robert_a_mocarski

before purchasing a package, try downloading poledit from Microsoft. It gives you a gui to edit registry settings in order to lock down PCs. You can turn off access to all sorts of things in Windows and even set up a list of applications that are the only apps that will run on the computer. It was written by Microsoft to enable the built in features of Windows to lock down PCs and best of all it's free.

by kateynoodle

+Thanks for the answer. I looked at poledit butin the end I thought X setup better because of the helpful idiot proof wizards! I tried to download X setup but without success, but found the prog on a magazine CD. All is now well in the office
xxx

by kdurichek

I just want to agree with the other people. 2000 is best bet for lock down, but lock down can be a problem with office politics. If you have a good boss there should not be any problems. Last place I worked was for goverment(contractor) and my department talked them into a lock down and we saw a 70% reduction in pc problems. Good luck.
allen

by kateynoodle

Thnks for the advice. Office politics! OFFICE POLITICS !!! Unfortunately my current boss doesn't trust my judgement so going for 2000 was not an option but going for a new boss was, so heres hoping I get the new job!!

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