[windows2000] Re: Internet Only PC
- From: "Andrew Duey" <lists@xxxxxxxx>
- To: <windows2000@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>, <GReese@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 10 Aug 2004 22:07:34 -0500
Internet Only PCSorry for the late reply but just getting caught up after a
vacation . . .
Check out a product called DeepFreeze (http://www.faronics.com/) For public
access terminals it is by far the best solution out there. It undoes 100% of
all changes on every reboot when it's frozen. I've used this for public access
terminals in hotels and found out about it after checking it out in the public
labs at the local university. It's sub $50 per seat.
It does something like write to a virtual HD instead of the real HD. You can
leave the machine as loose as you want, let them install toolbars, viruses, and
anything else and on the next reboot it will all be undone (including cookies,
passwords, etc).
After talking with the university network admin when challanged to break a
frozen computer, I opened regedit, and deleted the entire HKLM registry key and
most of the windows folder, the machine locked (rather pissed off) then I
pulled the power cord. When the machine booted backup it was as though I'd
never been there!
If you're still looking for a solution, I think this may be it. The only
problem I ran into is that periocally the machines must be unfrozen to add
patches & AV Def updates since they are wiped out after each reboot.
--Andrew Duey, MCSE
Duey's Computer Service, Inc.
----- Original Message -----
From: Greg Reese
To: windows2000@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Wednesday, July 28, 2004 8:51 AM
Subject: [windows2000] Internet Only PC
My company runs Senior housing. Independent living apartments, assisted
living, nursing homes, that sort of thing.
A couple years ago, it was decided to offer high speed internet in our
resident libraries. My solution at the time was to put in a Wyse terminal
running Windows CE and the CE version of IE. Everybody complained because they
couldn't access their Hotmail account or Yahoo mail etc.
So I put in a Windows 2000 workstation with no cd and no floppy, then locked
it down as tight as I could, set IE as the shell and left it.
I have continued to get complaints about it. They still have trouble
accessing various types of webmail and they get errors instead of popups. The
video went bad on one of them and I have it in my office. The thing is full of
viruses, they somehow managed to install the yahoo toolbar, cool websearch and
a few others. Kids and grandkids get ahold of this thing too, I don't think
it's all our residents. I thought I had it locked down pretty tight for the
sole purpose of keeping this from happening. It won't load plugins or Active X
so I am not sure how this stuff got on there.
It's a real pain in the rear for me from a support standpoint. You think
users are bad, try explaining the internet to a senior citizen sometime.
I was thinking of maybe a light install of Linux or something to straighten
this out. But I want their web surfing to be as easy as possible which means
they should probably stick with IE.
Does anyone else have to support something like this? I don't seem to have
mine quite right and would like some ideas to make it better.
Thanks!
Greg
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