Windows 7 Starter Proxy Problems

[chris-t]

Hi,
Our CLC have recently purchased 50 netbooks for our students to use for their research purposes and also for us as a school to look into different forms of technology to use in our new school which opens next year (under an RM managed service). With a view to possibly having staff and pupils with netbooks rather than having just traditional ICT suites, which in theory seems like a good idea.

Im currently setting the netbooks up for use and obviously with them running W7 starter adding them to our network wont work which is fine as the pupils will have ownership of the machines and save locally.

The problem im having is I can get internet access through the school network, however with no security being applied from our network they aren't going through our cache pilot proxy. I tried to apply a local group policy however again W7 starter doesnt have the capability to do this so I'm thinking now my only option is some sort of script to run on startup to force it to look at the proxy. I'm wondering if anyone knows if that would be possible or I would be open to any other ideas you may have!

Another option we tried was putting the proxy settings into IE but once one realises they can be removed they all will, or will just download Firefox, Chrome etc so that isn't really an option.

Also it seems now in newer versions of windows blocking acces to website using HOSTS doesn't seem to work anymore, so we are at a bit of a loss!

Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks, Chris

P.S The netbooks are
Samsung N140
1.6 Ghz Intel Atom
1GB Ram
220GB HD
Also all software is open source/free (iTunes, Open Office and Microsoft Security Essentials) to see what issues the pupils find with them, as I'm sure you'll know kids are experts in testing things to destruction!!

[OutToLunch]

Quick solution - move your proxy to be the only connection to the internet (ie last box before your router) rather than something that can be easily sidestepped. They might still turn off the proxy settings on the netbooks whilst experimenting but will soon stop when they realise it leaves them with no internet access!

Does W7 starter not even have the local policy settings of XP Home? You could still lock that down nicely at a push, would have thought at least a few of the settings were still lockable (machine wide proxy, greyed out changing etc)

PS - MSE isn't free for businesses/schools, just home use - be careful on that one