Help preventing network configuration modifications

Is there a way I can prevent the network connection settings and constituents from being modified by things such as P2P Networking? Aside from blocking certain addresses at the firewall, I mean.

This is not machine-specific. I keep most of the computers in a small town working, and they're all over the spectrum. They're all Windows machines, but that's about all they have in common.

Thanks and regards,

David

For those that have XP or 2000 you can run gpedit.msc and browse to User Configuration, Administrative Templates, Network, Network Connections. In there, you'll find a whole load of options to prevent network settings being changed. I'm not sure if this will help though - a few problems:

1. Not all computers will be running XP or 2000, and as far as I know this is only available in these OS.

2. Although these settings prevent the user from opening up Network Connections and changing the settings, I am not sure whether or not a P2P program would be prevented from changing them. I suppose you would have to experiment.

HTH,

Edwin

Thanks, Edwin. I have had two XPs come through here; the median is probably a 400 MHz machine running 98SE. I have one Windows 3.11 user and just yesterday successfully convinced the owner of a 286-12 laptop to move on. That was pure MS-DOS with an integral ROM providing MS Works!

I'm entirely against censorship, so am loathe to tell people they can't run Kazaa; still, facts are facts and their machines won't support the overhead. Currently I provide people with a little script that cleans out the registry startup entries so they can at least get up enough to uninstall, but that has to be tailored for each machine, as some (different) things need to be there.

I feel quite sorry for you - you must be facing an uphill battle, especially with one client only just leaving MS-DOS I haven't touched Windows 3.11 for years and years and only occassionally use 98SE (mainly because my dad insists on using a really old word processing program)!

Some applications which might do what you want:

1. Doctor Salman's Security Toolkit (http://dmisoftware.com/winsecure.htm). There is a section called "Network Security Setting" which may allow you to disable changing network settings and it works with all Windows from 95 up.

2. Winguides Tweak Manager (http://www.winguides.com/tweak/). Again, it works with all Windows from 95 up and there is a network section which may allow you to prevent changes to the networking settings.

Although I haven't tried these applications, they should work with most of your computers, and they should allow to you apply security settings to prevent changes (hopefully both by users and applications such as P2P).

Hope one of these does what you want

Edwin, I spend a lot of time in the 'C' forum, but my first visit here was to start the thread at:

http://forums.devshed.com/t119616/s.html

I got no answers at all. I didn't pursue it because it has security implications. I had answered a question in the HTML forum and got an email from the moderator that they preferred that information not be widely known. I thought the above post might be another case, so I just dropped it and spent a week, on and off, learning how to do it myself without benefit of DynDNS.

And all that time I could have just looked you up and pursued it privately by email if necessary!

In win 98/95 use poledit. You could also use zenworks in a large environment (This runs on novell or windows ), or there are others forgot the name of the microsoft one for domains oh well Ill think of it.

I had forgotten about Poledit - it looks similar to the gpedit.msc on XP or 2000. There does seem to be a network section which may allow you to prevent network settings being changed:

http://www.zisman.ca/poledit/

http://www.softstack.com/password/poledit.html

These links tell you how to get poledit installed and the second also includes a link to Access Manager which appears to be are more advanced version, with more settings.