[OPLINTECH] TIP/IDEA: Make a virtual Internet Explorer browser and solve all your lockdown problems using Altiris Software Virtualization Solution

[JKENZIG]

Hi Everyone,
Altiris software recently released a product called Software
Virtualization Solution.  This little gem of a program is Free for
personal use and under $4 a user for educational use.
 
The program basically allows you to take any program you want to lock
down or force settings to and put it in its own "virtual environment" So
for example instead of waiting for the IE7 windows vista version where
Internet explorer plays in its own memory space and cannot interact at
all with the Windows Operating system, you can now do that on your
current Windows 2000 and XP systems. 
 
I figured out how to do this in about 4 seconds after playing with the
product and realized what a GREAT THING this could be for a library
system.  No longer will you need to be clearing out or rebooting systems
in order to clear the browser, just close it. All Users previous
browsing is gone! The site http://www.svsdownloads.com/download.php has
some great other programs that you can virtualize.
 
 
1 Download the Altiris SVS program from
http://www.svsdownloads.com/download_svs.php
2. Download the Internet Explorer Reset on Close Virtual App on close
and Save it to the root of your C: drive from 
http://www.svsdownloads.com/download.php?filename=archives/Internet%20Ex
plorer%20-%20Reset%20On%20Close.vsa
(note the above line is the full link you may have to copy and paste it
or just get it from the svsdownloads site)

3. Use Explorer and navigate to and rename the Internet Explorer Reset
On Close.vsa you just downloaded to just Iexplorer.vsa. 

4 Install the Altiris SVS client click on the Get Key from Altiris link
in the installation and insert the Key from the download.
 
4. Navigate to C:\Program Files\Altiris\Software Virtualization Agent
and right click on the SVSCmd.exe and create a shortcut to it.  
 
5. Copy the shortcut you just created to your Desktop. 
 
6. Right click on the shortcut you just created and choose properties
and click in the target line field and add the following to the end of
the line:
                  
                                Iexplorer  A

7. You can now right click and rename the shortcut to Explorer or
anything else you want to call. 

8. Clicking on the Shortcut opens up a sandboxed Internet Explorer
browser that when it is closed clears out every site, cookie and
everything else that was done in the browser session. 

Now buy the product and follow the same steps on your patron
workstations and put the shortcut in the Startup folder of their Start
menu and change out the Internet Explorer shortcut with the SVS one. 

You can then also pick up the free Autorestart utility from 
http://www.teamsoftwaresolutions.com/files/AutoRestart.zip

Put autorestart in your startup folder and then add the SVS shortcut
location into autorestart and you will always have an open browser.

Peruse the SVSdownloads site as there are a lot of applications you
could do this with. If you use OpenOffice this would be ideal way to run
it also. If you download the admin kit for this product from Altiris you
can create your own vsa files and virtualize and sandbox any application
you want!     

Now think about the possibilities of doing this through Terminal
Services!

Pretty exciting stuff!

Jim Kenzig 
Network Manager 
Cuyahoga County Public Library