Topic: advice please for SME internet cafe

[tariq]

Hi, I am opening a small internet cafe. I have 5 Windows XP Pro workstations, and an SME 6 server. Using an ADSL line for internet. I was wondereing if anyone has done a similar thing and could offer me some advice/hints about their experiences.

I am hoping to have a roaming profiles, as each customer will have their own desktop settings. Also I wish to bolt down the workstations as much as possible security-wise so that they cannot install aplications etc. Anyone know of any guidelines/howto for using Group Policy with SME?

[del]

Hi,
Have a look here: http://www.winguardpro.com/
There is a free version and a paid version, I use the free one at home and it works pretty good. Hope this helps.
Regards,
Del

[tariq]

Hi, thanks for the idea, but I'd like to use group policy built into windows XP to achieve this without relying on 3rd party add-ons. I've seen that people are using  group policy with SME, but I cannot find any information telling me how to do it.

i.e. I would like to have the group plicy applied from the SME box to user-groups I specify in the domain.

[Mumm-Ra]

Not sure whether this would work but you can try creating a policy with the group policy mmc snap-in then saving it into the netlogon folder.  You would need to read up on group policy on Microsoft’s website.
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/treeview/default.asp?url=/technet/prodtechnol/windowsserver2003/management/gp/default.asp
If this doesn't work you can always try the policy editor from the NT4 server cd.  This may not have all the settings that you will require with XP so you may have to create you own policy file.

[james]

ok thanks I will try this and post my findings this week...