Blocking OE6 and IE8 from Internet

I've been guiding elderly friends who would rather take their chances for a year or so and carry on with XP rather than tackle a new OS. So far we have moved them from IE to Chrome, from MSE to Avast, from OE to a Gmail account, and have installed Trusteer Rapport - they are big on banking

I would really like to make it impossible for either IE or OE to access the internet but without hampering Chrome of course. Unfortunately I no longer have an XP system to play with (other than one in a VM) so am a bit unsure how I would go about this. They are not local so I can't just sit at their machine and sort it out for myself either. I did suggest a 'proper' security suite so I could use the firewall but they were reluctant to put any money in to this.

All advice welcome.

 

Here are instructions for totally disabling IE in WinXp.

And here are instructions for disabling Outlook Express in WinXP.

 

Try this "disable by using a proxy server"
http://pcsupport.about.com/od/browsers/ht/disableieproxy.htm

 

Thanks for the suggestions, I now need to figure out how I get them to follow those methods through. Teamviewer would be ideal but the husband is paranoid about me or anyone else having direct access to their computer so in reality it will probably never happen rolleyes

 

I know what you mean and I think we can both unnderstand the husbands paranoia. A few years ago I was able to help a Senior Citizen that lived across country get her computer protected by using Remote Assistance in XP but, the opportunity to do so hasn't come up since.

 

The seniors I help live within driving distance of me so I do "hands on" and explain what I'm doing. I also try helping over the phone, provided the problem is easily solved but if you don't run XP, it is hard telling them what to click without an XP display in front of you.

 

I think I'd be inclined to insist on access via TeamViewer if they want help from you. Of course, you should explain that each session with TeamViewer requires them giving you a password and that you can't access their computer if they simply do not start TeamViewer. If they are going to be stubborn about this and something bad happens because they did not allow you to use this most effective way to help them, then they are responsible for what happens.

 

If anything does go amiss I will be blamed anyway - pretty sure of that But where friends are concerned it's rarely black or white, it's more the art of the possible. The wife is the one who understands the need for change so I'll just have to try email and phone and hope she gets it. My XP on a VM is useful in this situation except where networking configuration is involved, as the setup is rather different from that of a freestanding machine.

 

In this thread, the OP is getting BSODs. It turns out that RapportPG.sys installed by Trusteer is destabilizing his computer. I've also read that the driver can be spoofed.

 

Yeah but that stuff is more than three years old. I was initially advised by my bank to use it - disclaiming all responsibility of course - and it has been running without problems on all the computers here for more than two years. But there was an issue initially, can't remember the details now, but Trusteer fixed it within a day of my reporting it. Personally I don't have any reservations about it based on my own experience.