Administrator vs Resident

[Paul & Leni]

I'm a resident in an "over 55" community and have been asked to become the
administrator of our computer room (7 computers running XP Professional).
The Home Owners Board has requested that all the computers have as their
home page our community web site. To stop people from changing the home
page I tried to install a program that "locks" in the home page of choice
and grays out the possibility of someone choosing a different home page.

There are two sign in possibilities on the computers, "Administrator" or
"Resident". The Administrator (with a password, which I have) can download
programs and install them on the computer, the Resident can not.

I can install the restrictive program when I am logged in as the
Administrator. It works fine but only restricts the Administrator from
changing home pages. When someone logs in as Resident they can still change
the home page. Loading and installing it in when signed in as the
Administrator does not affect Resident.

When I try to load the program as a "Resident" the computers will not accept
it since the computers will not allow residents to load and install any
programs.

How can I 1) change the computer settings so that, temporarily, I can load
and install a program as a Resident or 2)(better) Have the changes made when
signed in as "Administrator" affect "Resident"?

Thanks for any help that you can provide.

 

[Nepatsfan]

Instead of using a third party program, why not use the Local
Group Policy to prevent users from changing the home page?

Try the following:
Go to Start -> Run and type gpedit.msc in the Open box.
In the User Configuration branch, find this policy:

Administrative Templates\Windows Components\Internet
Explorer\Disable changing home page settings

Right click on the entry in the right hand pane and select
Enable.

The downside of using local group policy is that it applies to
all users, including members of the adminstrators group. There
are two ways of getting around this:

1. This method works with XP as well as Win2K:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;293655

2. To use this method, you have to temporarily disable simple
file sharing:
http://www.theeldergeek.com/gp07.htm

How to turn off Simple File Sharing:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;307874

If you're comfortable editing the registry then take a look at
this article:

http://www.jsifaq.com/subh/tip3800/rh3811.htm

 

[Paul & Leni]

Worked like a charm. Problem solved....thank you!

Paul

 

[Nepatsfan]

You're welcome. Glad to hear that you've got that problem fixed.

If you're not already, you might want to become familiar with
some of the other policies that you can implement within the
Local Group Policy. Putting restrictions on what the users of
those computers can do may save you a few headaches down the
road. First on my list would be going into User
Configuration\Administrative Templates\Control Panel and enabling
"Restrict access to the Control Panel".