Need a program.....

[Cyleightor]

Hey all, being that I'm too lazy to really dig around and find one myself, thought I'd ask if anybody else knows of a good program to prevent programs from being installed on a PC running XP.

I have 2 boys that absolutely love to install games on my computers and unfortunately I've taught them enough to know how to circumvent browser and windows prevention measures. All i really want is a program that will prevent programs from being installed unless a PW is provided. I don't need one of those all-in-one piles of shit that companies try to sell that includes internet filters, virus scanning, etc..., I just need that one feature.

Figured a goodly amount of us have kids, and I can't possibly be the only one who wants to throttle his kids when he logs on and sees icons for a dozen different demo games on his desktop ;)

thanks

edit: anyone else find it ironic that i'm trying to install a program whose main purpose is to stop the installation of programs?

[marcothy]

Windows can do this better than programs in account/user management. This would require someone logon to the PC to use it.

For example, you setup a user called administrator. This is the user that can install new apps, and do most changes to your PC. In the advanced user management, you will have the administrator in the Admin group for the local pc.

Then you setup a home user. This user you can make have no password, and we will place this user in the "User" group. This group prevents them from doing certain things on the pc - most importantly, installing applications. You can install while logged in as that user, by right clicking the installer and choosing run as... and typing the administrator username and password.

The next thing you would need to do, is make sure your security grants access to everything on your hard drive. User level prevents certain actions in Windows environment variables. It also prevents updates on the registry. So when making changes, applying updates, or running general installs, you need to be sure to login as an administrator.

You can also tweak group policies by going to start, run... and typing gpedit.msc.

Bottom line, windows has everything you need to control the actions. It's what businesses use. It will just take some reading to fully understand. But it beats a software that tries to do what windows does, because you can work around the software by killing the application's service that would monitor it.

From an application standpoint, your better off looking for an application that gives you a friendlier interface to implement windows controls.

Found this one in doing a search for such things:
http://www.download.com/XP-Home-User-Manager/3000-2094_4-10617076.html?tag=mncol&cdlPid=10884163

Free to try, and cheap to buy if you like it. But don't get an application that does what windows can, otherwise you'll find they found a workaround.

[Constantine]

I agree with marcothy

[marcothy]

If you need some help, let me know and we can use an Application called TeamViewer, and I can give you a quick rundown on the how-to.

[Cyleightor]

Gonna have to play with that idea right quick. The boys have always had user acces, and i have admin, but i've never seen any options to change and the computer insists i don't have gpedit, so i'll poke around in the installed windows components for a bit.

thanks

ugh, ok, so apparently xp home doesn't come with it and doesn't "allow" the installation by normal means. guess it's time to dust of my old memories of installing and registering programs via the command line :eek:

[marcothy]

PM me your email and I will send you the files with instructions on how to enable/install group policies on XP Home.

[marcothy]

Or here is a quick how-to...

http://bogdan.org.ua/2007/11/15/windows-xp-he-home-edition-gpedit-msc-group-policy-editing-via-registry.html

[marcothy]

Also, sorry for spamming here. Go to Control Panel, User Accounts, Advanced Tab, and select Advanced User Management option.

Verify the account memberships for each group:
-Administrator
-Power Users
-Users
-Guests etc etc etc

If they truely are locked down to only the user group, try going to a further restricted group. Next level below users by default should be guest. But User access should restrict installs.
They inherit the least restrictive policy, so if you have them in the users group AND the power users group, then they can still install applications.

[Cyleightor]

ok, got it installed, apparently while you were posting....of course i installed the frensh copy first....doh.

anyhow, gonna tinker with it and will holler if i need a hand. thanks a ton.