Need help restrictings installing/downloading

A friend of mine works at an underfunded department at a local campus and one of their computers died. The powersupply caught fire and the hard drive is shorted (connect it to a powersupply imediately cause the supply to turn off).

Anyway they have no budget to speak of, so to save money she had be replace the powersupply, hard drive, reinstall Windows XP Pro, Office XP ect.

Here is my problem, before the hard drive was ruined and back when the department had an IT budget, the computer was configured so that you need a password to install programs or download files from the internet. This was done because the grad students kept filling the hard drive with garbage (media file, pirated software ect).

She doesn't seemed that concerned with my inability to implenent these restrictions. I just don't like the idea of leaving a job half finished. Althought I have a CIS degree and a lot of experience building and repairing PCs the only thing I know about secruity settings are UNIX file perminsions.

So this is what I need to know.

1)Is this something I can learn to do in half a day?

2) If so what do I need to use, Microsoft's Group Policy Editor, a third party application?

3) How do I do this? Any advice, tips, links to relevant articles will be appreciated.


<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by Strife on 03/27/03 05:44 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

Some links to information you might find useful:
(And an apology for the slow response.)

<A HREF="http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/win_xp_logon.htm" target="_new">Windows XP User Profiles</A>

<A HREF="http://www.boyce.ws/pdf/4067c05f.pdf" target="_new">Gaining Control of WinXP Startup and Shutdown - .pdf file</A>

<A HREF="http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_groups.htm" target="_new">Over View of All Groups in Windows XP</A>

<A HREF="http://www2.cajun.net/~theriots/xpsitefolder/win_xp_passwords.htm" target="_new">Administrator and User Passwords in Windows XP</A>

<A HREF="http://helpdesk.nus.edu.sg/support/user/guides/WinXP-Adv/default.htm" target="_new">Windows XP Quick Start Guide - Advanced Topics</A>

<A HREF="http://www.jsiinc.com/SUBI/tip4300/rh4302.htm" target="_new">How do I use the Group Policy Editor, in Windows XP, to change local policy settings for the computer or for users?</A>

<A HREF="http://www.webtube.co.uk/Support/using_system_policy_editor.htm" target="_new">Using System Policy Editor to restrict machine access in a domain</A>

<A HREF="http://www.microsoft.com/technet/treeview/default.asp?url=/technet/prodtechnol/winxppro/proddocs/sce_pols_check.asp" target="_new">Securing your computers using Security Configuration Manager</A>

<A HREF="http://nsa1.www.conxion.com/winxp/guides/wxp-1.pdf" target="_new">Guide To Securing Microsoft Windows XP - .pdf file</A>

If you scan through some of this information, especially the last link, you should have a much better grasp of how to implement the security you'll need with the operating system.

Toey

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