[WEB4LIB] Win2000 download restrictions

[Thomas M G Bennett]

I haven't been able to prevent downloading yet but you can stop installing
programs with W2K built in features.

With W2K you need first to make sure your disk format is NTFS not FAT32.
There is a utility in the Disk Manager to change a FAT32 disk to NTFS
without losing data.  Once your sure you have an NTFS drive you can set
read/write/execute/etc restrictions on the disks for each user.  Its a good
idea to change the administrator username to something else, that will make
it harder for someone to log in as an administrator.

  We have a public login which is the same for all public PCs and have set
Drive C to  disallow writing for the public login.  This does not interfere
with programs like Netscape writing cache files. It must see Netscape and
other programs running as System, not the user, and System still retains
write access.  We've tested downloading and installing programs using
Netscape and IE.  A program can be downloaded to the desktop but the install
program crashes when trying to install the software.  So the software is
never allowed to run on the machine but this doesn't prevent multimedia
files (graphics, sound, etc.) that might be copyright from being on the PC.

With further investigation of W2Ks administration I may find ways to limit
download but not yet.  It may be as easy as removing a dll that is vital in
FTP.  That's similar to how we lock down preferences in Netscape, the
prefui32.dll (preferences user interface) a 13k file is removed from the
Netscape program directory which is necessary for bringing up the
preferences window. When we need to make a change just copy that file back
in from another directory (not in the Path) where we keep it on the hard
drive.

Hope this helps some,

Thomas

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-----Original Message-----
From: web4lib at webjunction.org
[mailto:web4lib at webjunction.org]On Behalf Of Michele Seipp
Sent: Tuesday, June 05, 2001 2:07 PM
To: Multiple recipients of list
Subject: [WEB4LIB] Win2000 download restrictions


We have just upgraded to Windows 2000, server and workstations.  The City IS
staff, who manage the network, want to prohibit any and all downloads for
both staff and public.

1)	They are concerned about being held personally liable for any
illegal downloads found on a city computer.  How are other IS depts dealing
with this liability issue?

2)	Library staff certainly have legitimate reasons to download content,
and I want to find out if there are solutions in Win2000 for limiting rather
than completely prohibiting downloads.  For instance, can downloads be
limited to a particular drive in W2K?

Thanks for your suggestions,
Michele Seipp
Lafayette Public Library
Lafayette CO