Printable View
Is there any way to restrict or deny a user the ability to download files while using win2k pro? I have a 14 yr old son who dnlded Kazaa, and the resulting uninstall necessitated a reformat and reinstall due to too many bad clusters? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Maybe you should edit the local machine user settings!
And give your little prankster a own user account with lesser rights.
here you go,
http://www.bykeyword.com/pages/restricting.html
Dr_Evil
Hi Ken,
Welcome to AO. My fellow members have already covered the security issue. I am just a little concerned about something that you said:
Quote:
the resulting uninstall necessitated a reformat and reinstall due to too many bad clusters? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
I do not see how installation/uninstallation of software can cause "bad clusters" I have always considered this to be a problem with the HDD surface, and a hardware problem.
Perhaps you might like to run "checkdisk for errors" (Win2k?) over your HDD (all partitions), make sure you do a surface scan, and get a log. It sounds as if your HDD may be on the way out, and the Kazaa thing was a coincidence.
Your son might actually have done you a favour :D
Good Luck
Too many bad clusters definately indicates a hardware failure, rather than software problems. Reformatting ( which it sounds like you have already done ) will remove the bad clusters from your available space, but will not solve the problem if you drive is starting to give up on you. Check it out, and get it replaced.
Restricting downloads by a 14YO? I don't think there is any means of doing that, short of murder ( which is illegal ). The best suggestion I would have to stop these activities causing disruption on your computer is to get them one of their own - although I know this raises a whole lotof other issues ( very like the ones we are going through with out 11YO ATM ).
Actually, a good firewall device would probably help in the downloads area. ZoneAlarm wouldn't be good enough but something like Sygate or a hardware firewall where you enable specific rules about downloads and what applications are allowed to download should help mitigate this issue.
The other way is to prevent the user from downloading and/or installing anything. A restricted account should help with that.
The following may also help:
http://www.tburke.net/info/misc/q255722.htm
http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000...s/appsec-o.asp (this comes from the Win2K Server kit. I honestly don't know if you can use this on pro..)
Other free Resource Kit tools
giving your son a user a/c that doesn't have write access to C: :confused:
start------>settings ---> control panel -------> user accounts
You can assign your son an user accounts with limited rights. Firewall would block any download but I don't know how good would be an firewall if an user has an administrative rights. One more thing you can put an password in your firewall settings. So if some one wants to go around it, they cannot without authentication. ZoneAlarm, Sygate, Norton, etc.etc they are all good, if you know how to manage them.
Check out this software... "Deep Freeze" http://www.deepfreezeusa.com/index.htm "Pro" version will allow you to setup a partition that he can write to. Otherwise, it locks the system down HARD... I have formated, "C:\del *.*", etc... Bounce the box... everything is back. "Unlocking" the software disables it.
I think a combination wuold be good for your system and to prevent your son from doing what you dont want him doing.
A firewall would protect your system and also prevent him from using programs which you do not want him to. You could set the firewall to prevent access to Kazaa and that would stop him from downloading. Setting rules to only allow those things you specfiy wuold mean that even if he installed something new that would stil not be allowed if you did not specify it in the rules.
Also give him just regular user rights so that he cannot change anything.
But in your case with the bad sectors, if there are too many , i recommend replacing the drive as that shows signs that its gonna fail soon. better to replace now than to lose your data.
If you really want to keep the drive then a scandisk would be enough. reformatting would be going to the extreme.