Docs and Settings on Pro Domain Controlled Computers

[Aideen]

I am the network administrator of my office and I am facing some issues during administration. I have about 50 users in the network and many of them have started fishy things on their computers. I want to delete their accounts at a time and keep an account called as Administrator and also All Users. There should not be any other account on those computers except what I have stated. My network consists of Windows XP and Windows Vista, and I have Windows 2008 Server. So can I restrict those users to open specific applications because that is creating a lot of issues? Please help!

[HiSpeed]

To do that you need to create different user account types in Windows. You can even configure your router, almost every router will allow this, to block the sites that you define in the list. You can take the assistance from some online manuals or user guides or whitesheets which provides a detail explanation on the topic. For this you usually require the hosts file.

[Aideen]

We are using Cisco router but I don't know how to block sites on Cisco router. Let me see if I can find some whitesheets or user guides on the same. I must admit over here that it is the best device that I have ever seen. Basically what happens is that when people try to use various unwanted applications, they bring virus to computers alongwith their dirty things which thus affects the network computers. I just want to avoid that part.

[Lemog]

I know people and seen this a lot of time that people download illegal stuffs like piracy software, movies, and even porn which affects the whole network. If I remember my last job, some people made a record in the history of that company downloading around 500 GB of porn in a day. Weird! So I think if you block certain sites then they will definitely look for another option instead of stopping it. But if you set it up in such a way that the computer will handle (for example: exe) file directly instead of allowing them to download or install it. In this way you will not have to worry about any further loop holes.

[Aideen]

But if I delete the Documents and Settings folder leaving Administrator and All Users folder, will that have an adverse effect on my computer or network? I understood what you said but I think restricting the websites is a much better option then what to told because we could delete the setup file of any application that they are downloading by looking into their computers. The reason I suggested to delete the Document and Settings folder was that I have seen that people heavily utilizes the bandwidth while surfing the internet which increases the size of the temp folder, generate a lot of histories and stores larger files on their accounts folder. Thus their account consumes a lot of hard disk partition. This is turn slows down the computer.