Need some advice

Hi Everyone,

I do not know if I am posting this in the right area. Anyhow is is my problem:

We have networked computers at work. I just recently got the owner to approve to install the Free Edition of AVG, We do run Mcafee on the office mains where the computers are networked to. While going through all the computers and doing updates and things, I noticed that several of them had gaming sites on them through the registery keys. My question is, is there anyway to stop these employees from being able to do this? We have tried the lan settings for yrs, but eventually everyone caught on and figured out how to undo this. Also can I "uninstall" the games that come on the computers? We are running windows XP pro.

Any and all help and suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks
Katie

 

Theres always a way. Obviously this is a business network, so do you have any servers running windows server 03 at all? What about a hardware firewall?
You can edit the hosts file on the computers if all else fails if you know the sites theyre going to. as far as downloading and installing games, you can block installs via group policy if you use active directory.
If not we can figure something else out.

 

I don't believe Major Geeks supports the deliberate flouting of software licence rules by business.

Especially when the recipient is a small company, that provides a free pro bono service but still needs to make its money somewhere.

 

Thank you for telling me this. I guess I should had made myself clearer and noted that we do plan to purchase the business editions of AVG. These computers are only used for 4 months a yr and currently AVG is only running on 2 of the computers. I personally am not fond of AVG on a personal level but she swears by it and does use the paid verisions on her office computers.

TY King Steve, No, none running 03 server at all that I am aware of. Not sure I know anything about the hardware firewall. Could u please direct me some place where I can read up on that. We do have windows firewall. Yes we do use an active directory to my knowledge. As we have a Processing main running in another office that feeds to all of the outter offices. I will do more research on this.

Thanks
Katie

Thanks

 

I have been asked for various versions of your request.

Usually it is along the lines of "Please disable Internet Explorer but leave Email running"

You should to spell out exactly what you need and don't need first of all and work from that.

You could try editing the Hosts file as a simple control.

 

how big is this network?

without knowing more about how your network is set up, its hard to say. I run ISA04 and i use http block lists. very easy. more than likely if you do have some sort of hardware firewall between your router and switch, you'll have the ability to implement an http block list. if you have a network admin, id talk to that person about it.

if youre using active directory, you have windows server set up. be it 2000, 2003 or 2008, AD sits on a win server. you can implement group policies to deny the domain users privileges to download and install programs. this is something you should read up on as well if you do have the ability to work with it.

other than that, you can edit hosts files on the individual computers to define those site IPs manually. that will take a little extra work though unless you know how to write batch.