Back to School - Shared Computer Toolkit is Gold

Ff you are a parent of a student with computers in your home or at school, then you should check out the Shared Computer Toolkit V1.0 released today.

Things in the Toolkit you can use on your home computers, or bring to the attention of your school's IT or computer-lab folks include Windows Disk Protection, which protects the computer hard drive from being modified without administrator approval. Disk changes made are cleared with each restart unless the administrator chooses to save them. You can restrict user access to programs, settings, and Start menu items. The tool also allows you to lock shared local user profiles to prevent permanent changes. (This tool is specifically for use in workgroup environments that do not use Active Directory and Group Policy. A Group Policy template is also included for use in Active Directory environments.) The Profile Manager helps you create and delete user profiles. You can use this tool to create user profiles on alternative drives that will retain data and settings even though Windows Disk Protection is on. You can delete profiles locked by the User Restrictions tool.