[OPLINTECH] FW: Solution for some flash memory drives not working on public computers?

Tue May 20 21:44:38 EDT 2008

Hi all,

At Liberty Center, DeepFreeze is configured to thaw in the middle of the night and autoreboot for updates, and to allow anything to happen that a Patron can do during use. Patrons do not have administrator access to the machines, and removable drives appear to work ok. Most usb flash drives work at the hardware level with the standard inbuilt USB Mass Storage stack that comes with XP/2000, so it hasnt been an issue there.

As far as the shutdown issue for junkware prevention, at LCPL it's posted and spoken policy to reboot after using the machine. You also can remove the shutdown or logoff buttons from the start menu of the patron users and include a shortcut called Log Off that executes "shutdown -r -t 2" and that will accommodate someone going elsewhere in the building for longer than (screensaver timeout) to hunt down a book for a project or collaborating with someone else on another console. an idle triggered restart would be irritating sometimes.

Yours,

Charles T (Tom) Houghtby IV
IT Manager, Liberty Center Public Library

Re: [OPLINTECH] Solution for some flash memory drives not working on public computers?‏
From:   oplintech-bounces at oplin.org on behalf of Chad Neeper (list) (cneeper at level9networks.com)
Sent:   Mon 5/19/08 3:58 PM
To:     oplintech at oplin.org (oplintech at oplin.org)

Just a thought for a setup like Vanessa's:

If you don't already, you might consider adding a scheduled job to
auto-restart the workstation upon x amount of minutes of inactivity.
This might help reduce the chance of a patron's malware-infested storage
device from contaminating the next patron's storage device. That
strategy works very well with Deep Freeze.

Chad

-----------------------
Chad Neeper
Senior Systems Engineer

Level 9 Networks
740-548-8070 (voice)
866-214-6607 (fax)

--   Full LAN/WAN consulting services   --
-- Specialized in libraries and schools --

Vanessa Bradt wrote:
> Yes, we had that problem here too.  I think it's very frustration to patrons who come here to print a Word doc and they are encountered with a message they don't understand. I like to mimic the windows environment to what they would encounter at their home.  But unlike their home computers, we use both Deep Freeze and Full Control.  Our patron computers are stand alone with Internet access.  Full Control stops patrons from changing settings and Deep Freeze doesn't allow any changes. So we decided there really was no reason to stop a patron from installing a new program. So, in Full Control there is a setting to allow any program to run.  This has been several weeks and we have had no problems, in fact it really helps patrons who are novice computer users.  Less messages that pop up that say it's not allowed to do something. So, if a virus does get through, which they do, and patrons install some program, once we reboot the system.  All gone, back to the original configurati
 on
>  .
>
>
> Vanessa Bradt, Automation Specialist
> Norwalk Public Library
> 419-668-6063
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Phil Shirley [mailto:pshirley at cuyahogafallslibrary.org]
> Sent: Monday, May 19, 2008 10:03 AM
> To: oplintech at oplin.org
> Subject: [OPLINTECH] Solution for some flash memory drives not working on public computers?
>
> With the security we have on our public computers, there are some flash
> memory drives that won't work.  Some of these want to run their own
> software, which doesn't work because we only allow the running of
> certain software that's installed on the computer (Word, etc.), and I've
> heard that even if we allowed the running of the applications on some of
> the popular flash drives by adding them to our "run only" entry, some of
> these programs would still have a problem because they want more access
> to the registry than we should give them.
>
> Has anyone encountered and solved a similar problem with giving access
> to flash memory drives on public computers, or does anyone have any
> suggestions - perhaps at least a list of program names for these drives
> to add to my "run only" list?
>
> Phil
> --
>
> Phil Shirley
> Technology Services Coordinator
> Cuyahoga Falls Library
> Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio
> 330-928-2117, ext. 109
> pshirley at CuyahogaFallsLibrary dot org
>
> --
> This message has been scanned for viruses and
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>
>
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>
>

--

-----------------------
Chad Neeper
Senior Systems Engineer

Level 9 Networks
740-548-8070 (voice)
866-214-6607 (fax)

--   Full LAN/WAN consulting services   --
-- Specialized in libraries and schools --

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