History File Location

[Guest]

Our school system uses a program (DeepFreeze) to always keep computer
configurations from changing no matter what students do to them but a
drawback to this is that we lose the IE history when the computer is rebooted
so the students to ahead and try to access inappropriate websites knowing
that the history file will be wiped clean when the computer is restarted.
There is a folder on the computer that is not affected by the program and
keeps whatever data is stored there; in DeepFreeze terms it is drive T. Is it
possible to move the History file to this drive so that the information is
not lost on reboot?
Thank you.

 

[Gary Smith]

Yes, it's possible to move the history folder my making the appropriate
registry changes, although this might be a bit of a chore if you have many
machines or many accounts to deal with. Moving the history folder won't
prevent the determined users from clearing it themselves, though. I don't
think there's any way to do that. Consider also whether this is something
you really want to know. Knowledge isn't just power -- it also sometimes
implies obligation and even liability.

 

[Rob Parsons]

Hi Danny,

I hope you are a teacher and not a student!

You will find the path to the history folder under the following registry
key

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Shell
Folders
(You will have to be logged on the student account)
Change at your own risk though! I am surprised that your browser management
software does not provide an option to log all navigation history.

Depending on your version of windows there is a utility gpedit.msc (Group
Policy Editor) that you could use to stop your students from re-booting the
machine to wipe their History.