Gates Computers and Internet Access

[Robert Sullivan]

>1.  Use the proxy method in Internet Explorer to limit web access to their web
>catalog for one profile

>Apparently, the library has their workstations set up to do all things.  When
>the workstation is in catalog-mode, they don't want general Internet surfing
>going on.

I thought this was mentioned as something you were not allowed to do under the
terms of the grant - they want full Internet access.  However, I need more
sleep and may be misremembering this. :-)

>This is where their problem starts.  As they explained it to me, the Gates
>computers come with preconfigured profiles.  They've found that they can't
>manipulate certain Internet Explorer settings in these profiles.  We discussed
>editing the registry but it turns out that you can only do this as the
>Administrator.  So, the only change you could make would affect all users on
>the machine.  If you restricted access to the Administrator, all profiles would
>have restricted access which is not what they want.

I think you can create your own profiles, although for now we're going to use
ours (due to be set up next week) as is.  Since the Internet settings are
stored in each profile, you certainly can create one with restricted access and
one with full access.

The proxy settings are stored in

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings

(where the profile you want to restrict is the current user, or you may load
the profile as administrator in HKEY_USERS)

You want to set ProxyEnable to 1.  There are a couple of other settings which I
don't have in front of me because we don't do it that way any more, but if you
set the allowed list through the menus and examine the Internet Settings key
before and after, they're easy to spot.

Bob Sullivan                               scp_sulli at sals.edu
Schenectady County Public Library (NY)     http://www.scpl.org