Page 1 of how do i do this on iexplorer on xp?? please

hi my mates is setting up a new office he has bought 15 pc with xp proffesional on them all he wants on them is email and access to his web site for data inputting he doesnt want the staff playing about on the net all day so wants to block everything except his web site any ideas etc much grateful?

Need a few more technical details about the network he is running, it is very possible to do, and I can think of various ways, depending on the setup.

If you have a server on the network, you can configure that as a dns server, set the 15 machines to use that as their dns servers, then only put your website in the dns. Doesn`t totally stop them getting at the internet, but they would need to know the IP address of the site they want, or a dns server.

You could use the ratings system on IE, quick google will turn up how to generate the files, then you can setup IE as an administrator to only go to the sites you allow. This can be set on individual machines, or if you are running active directory on the network you can force this out as a group policy.

You could run a proxy server - either a free one or a pay one, and configure it to only allow access to his website.

The posibilites are endless, but all depend on how the network is setup.

Remember to setup normal user accounts either locally or on the domain depending on the setup, so that the users do not have administrator rights, else they can change the settings back.

Come back here if you need more help.

Tom

there is no dedicated server in the offices really he has bband modem come router combined thing that is running 4 pcs at the moment he was going to buy another hub then just plug all computers into the hub to gain access all that it is there is a website on a server at head office this is a small call centre and the girls in the office just need acess to the site which is password protected etc the only data that is sent are customers names and address etc so no big stuff 512k bband should cope with this shouldnt it im all ears m8 regarding set up etc many thanks

First things first, 512Kb broadband will be fine for that, at work we have aprox 2000 workstations sharing a pair of two meg leased lines, and although we are about to upgrade to a pair of 10 meg lines, the current setup works fine.

As for restricting access it sounds like the best thing you can do is look into the content advisor (I may have called it something else in my last post, but this is the correct name). Internet Explorer allows you to set a password on it, and then keeps a list of allowed websites. If you set the password, allow the company site, when a user attempts to go to any other site they will be prompted for the Content Advisor password, and will not be able to get to the site without it. (This is assuming that they cannot install another browser, which goes back to making sure that they are normal users, no local rights etc). Anyway, setting this up is really simple, and MS have a nice page on their site, here:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/using/howto/security/contentadv/config.mspx

Just make sure that you haven`t ticked the "Users can see sites with no rating" box, and you should be fine, take you 2 mins per PC to setup one you have got the first one going!

I used this at work to restrict access to the catalogue website for our terminals in the libraries, and although I forced it out using group policy, setting it locally will have the same effect, and it seems to work really nicely there.

Tom

Alternatively don`t configure any DNS on the XP machines. This may mean you need to disable DHCP depending on how configurable the router is.

Then enter the relevant addresses into the hosts file.

OR

depending on the type of router it may contain some content filtering abilities. This would allow you to only allow certain traffic out and/or restrict websites. What make and model is the router?

This item was edited on Monday, 13th September 2004, 22:58

Best thing to do would be to packet filter data though the router, you can set routers or even software fiewalls on each PC if need be to only allow http access to one site or what ever address`s you say and the tcp ports that email uses.

yhanks for all the advice gonna try it see which easiest thx again folks