stop users from downloading programs

The best method is to make sure that's part of your company's/school's/whatever's Internet policies. Make it clear that you don't want people installing non-approved software and programs, and make it clear the ramifications (if any). Then enforce it.

If you want a software solution, there's really not much you can do as far as I know. You can lock them out of directories via certain permissions, giving you less places to look, but that will still keep them downloading and installing.

There's a program called Fortres101 that may be a small help. We use it at the school on our Win98 clients. www.fortres.com
You can dictate certain file names/executables that can't be run. So, students that have not signed our Internet agreement can'teven run IE or Netscape because the iexplore.exe and netscape.exe files are locked out. I also block stuff they frequently download and install, such as Yahoo! chat. Because the name of the installer does not change much, by putting in that file name, they can download but not install it. I just delete the file periodically.

Good luck.

Since you are running NT4, you can restrict what users do on the systems in a couple of ways. First, make sure only admins are in the Administrators group, and other users are only put into the Users group. This will restrict them from installing any software that needs Admin rights to install. Second, you can further restrict and assign rights to groups within User Manager to limit what everyday users can do. Third, you can create Manditory System/User Policies with the Policy Editor that activate whenever the users log in. You can restrict what applications they are allowed to run in the User Policy by adding your "approved" applications into the list. There's really no need for any third party solution since you're running NT, as long as you keep them out of the Administrators group. You can apply whatever level of restrictions you deem necessary.

There are several companies that make Internet monitoring software, but the one that I have found the cheapest, and best, is SurfControl. You can download a demo version at: http://www.surfcontrol.com

You can stop download by file type, or stop people going to web pages of a certain type as well. It is also easy to configure!

I found this program very good, and I normally don't promote specific products!

Hope this helps.
Regards.
Duwane

There isn't much point in adding any more than has already been said, as just about everything has been covered. I would just like too add that we had a similar problem and add security and policies to stop users, but we also installed pc anywhere on all pc's. If we suspect any one we can watch what they are doing from our own pc. If the users know about htis they often stop.

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