Small Lab Administration Advice

Hi everyone, I just landed a job at my school to admin a small lab in our library. (My school is really small and the “tech” department is short-staffed) The lab consists of 7 computers, all of Pentium 3 caliber with varying amounts of RAM and hard disk space. However there is a problem, when I first took over the lab I formatted the drives and installed Windows 2000 on all of the machines. The systems were great for a while but gradually the systems be came really gunked up with things people downloaded and documents which people saved to the hard drive. I tried to limit what people could do in windows by changing the accounts people logged on with to the most restricted setting. However this still allowed people to download things and install a lot of programs which do not go through the windows installer. People could also still access settings in the control panel, as well as the context menu on the desktop and in IE. Basically what I would like to do is modify the local user settings in such a way that people can't do the following things:
-No write access to the hard drive, read only
-No installation of programs
-Context menus in IE, the desktop, and explorer disabled
-Windows update disabled
-System tools disabled (defrag/scandisk etc.)
-Disable settings change in IE
-Desktop images disabled
-Disable Lock computer and change password when CTRL+ALT+DEL is pressed
-Disable Help, Search, Settings, Run, and Documents in the Start Menu
I'm really not that experienced in administrating any number of computers so I would be grateful for any information and guidance. Also if anyone could point out anything I missed it would be a big help.
Thanks,
xb-70

Theres a program called tweaking toolbox XP that has a demo out and if you like it i guess you could purchase it. Im not sure if it would server its purpose being on a few different computers but its worth a try. You can disable most of the things you mentioned. At my school they have a program keeping us from doing things like that it says "This hs been disabled by the system administrator" I dont go back to school until wednesday so i guess ill find out then. In the meantime, somebody help this guy out i know someone knows a program limiting access

abitavenger

BTW if possible at my school they have a small folder on the desktop that u can write in and thats it. Its also very small like 5MB if that so students if possible are able to save their work. But at the end of the day it gets deleted. Just an Idea to help out the students i know it helps me.

Thanks for the information, but I'm sure that this sort of functionality is built into windows 2000 I have seen it done at my local library and they were not running a blocking program so far as I could tell. The reason i want to use the built in functionality of windows is because I have a budget of zero, and i can't buy a single copy for multiple comuters because we have software audits by this middle-states privates school accrediation council who will go ballistic at any sight of piracy. If anyone has any information it would be greatly appreciated.
xb-70

Bump

I havent used 2000 in awhile, but I can give you some vague advice on your needs. Alot of the things you want to do can be done within win2000. The main thing you need to do is make sure there is a administrator account and a seperate user account for all the people using the computer(s).( In XP its called a Guest account) You can restrict the user accounts access to most of the computer this way. You can also limit downloads and such in your internet options security and privacy if you have internet access.
Hope this helps.

Well according to your descrption I think I've a solution. I think you'll find this software is very sweet and makes you happy. It is called deepfreeze. (www.deepfreeze.net) after doing the installtion to thhe machine your people can come and do any mess in the computer but after the restart all the things they have done or save will be lost even teh hard disk format...(according to the sofware info) If you wanna do a software installtion tehn you give the admin password disable the software do the necassary changes then reactivatre it again. So isn't this cool for you

well in the widows 2000 you can do some of the restricton too using the gpedit. just run it throught he run command and you can change the group policy so you can restriuct how users will us the computer and what they can do and cannot....etc. but the earlier link i gave to you will allow you more relief i think but you may have to spend little cause this will be for a school and for learning purpose also.

there is a PCI card that can help you let's say a user decided to format a pc wich has this pci card installed. He will format it .. but when he reboots it the computer will return to its previous stage..unformatted. What this card do , is to reverse all the changes done. If a students installs a program, when you reboot the program will not be there etc etc

I forgot what's it called but if you look around on ebay , you can find them for a few $$ each

The PCI one that I've seen is called PCI Hard Drive Sheriff or something along those lines. I got one to test, and didn't like it so much. We bought a boatload of Centurion Guards (www.centuriontech.com) to protect some of our machines.

It is a hardware/software solution that has a small device that plugs into the floppy device chain, and a small program installed on the computer. A key in the back of the PC controls access to lock or unlock the system. You can delete, modify, tweak, and otherwise destroy Windows. Reboot and it doesn't remember a thing you did.

Convenient for no-nonsense management (never again have a pr0n banner pop up on an unsuspecting user). They're about ~$80 a pop if I remember right?

-ben

Thanks for the replies but at upwards of $50 i dont think that it will be possible, but again thatnks anyway. Also if anyone has any more informtion i am still seeking an answer.
xb-70