A Few Things I Need Help With

[Pear]

1. The little red Sophos icon in the the systray. I can't make it disappear or disable the students from opening, then closing it. Of course I want Sophos to run at all times whilst they are logged on. I have to run Sophos in school too cos thats who has the deal with LEA.

 

2. Clicking on the start menu folders twice to bring up explorer. This is a bit of a problem as we have kids doing it every lesson and it worries the teachers, now I know that they probably can't do much damage since all permissions are set, but the teachers get very worried for some reason. So is there a way to disable that ?

 

3. I set up a profile. It worked fine on the local PC. Then I changed it from .dat to .man and moved it across to the server so the kids could use it. It almost worked perfectly, however the explorer bar changed the icons on the toolbar at the top (maybe due to group policies). For example I didn't select 'copy to' or 'move to' but they appear instead of the 'cut', 'copy' and 'paste' I wanted.

 

Thanks in advance.

[Dos_Box]

Hi Pear. Before we start can we ask you to put your school in your profiles signiture please. this will allow us to help you better by kbowing what type of school you are in. Right, down to work.

 

1. You can't. The little lightning flash shows you that Sophos is active when red and inactive (not working) when grey.

 

2 and 3. What server and desktop OS are you using? If you have Active Directory the all this .man and .dat business is old news and everything is now done via a default user profile and GPO's. If you are using Windows 98 you may be stuffed.

[Pear]

Yes I do have active directory...

 

I have Windows 2000 Server with 40 Win2k and 20 XP clients.

 

I operate like this:

Each user has their own folder just for documents \\server\name

The start menu is redirected via gp to \\server\login

The profiles to \\server\profiles (1 for staff, 1 for students)

The gp for students is configured for what I believe to be most restrictive

 

With regards to the Sophos, is there no way to change the permissions on the file icmon.exe so it cannot be terminated unless by system or administrator ? or is there a reg trick to hide the sysicon like with VNC ?

[Dos_Box]

Right! It sounds like you don't have half the options in GP enabled that you should have.

 

1. Lets prevent pupils from Sophos shall we?

 

pupilsGPO\user configuration\administrative templates\system\don't run specified windows applications. (this will prevent the user from starting te program, but not the system on boot up)

 

pupilsGPO\user configuration\administrative templates\start menu and task bar - knock yourself out!

 

2. Locking down explorer.

 

pupilsGPO\user configuration\administrative templates\windows components\windows explorer - Again, feel free to be as restrictive as you want.

 

 

You should be able to make anything and everyting inacessable via GPOs provided you can find the option :/

[Pear]

I had Sophos in my list allowed programs to run so I took it out and then logged on as a student. Windows came up with a restriction message but there is no icon there and I think its still running because SAVAdmin says it is.

 

Anyway to not get restriction messages ?

 

There is nothing however to stop the start menu being double clicked in the GPO. Neither anything to make sure the profile loads tools on tool bars.

 

Currently it shows BACK, FORWARD, UP, FOLDERS, HISTORY, MOVE TO, COPY TO, DELETE, UNDO, VIEWS

 

I want it to show BACK, FORWARD, CUT, COPY, PASTE, UNDO, VIEWS which I set up correctly in the profile.

[StewartKnight]

I've had the same problem with the little blighters here stopping the Sophos "lightening bolt". The ICT teacher told them, that was the software that logged everything they did, and allowed him to log onto their machine! DOH!

 

Anyway, I spoke with Sophos themselves (very friendly and useful). Apparently it doesn't make any difference if they kill the icon, it's just an indicator. Sophos is still running!

[ChrisH]

On my XP machines I just completely disable the tray so they dont see it. Doesnt work on 2000 though.

[Frazer]

Not too sure how you have this problem.

Im logged in as administrator and i cant even stop the red lightning icon, unless I goto sophos in the start menu (if you redirect they wont have the shortcut) and click stop on IC Client.

Clicking on the icon itself in no way lets me terminate it, or have I misunderstood?

If the students are running "Sophos Anti-Virus" (WSWEEPNT.EXE) then you can deny the students from running this particular file since its just an admin console and they shouldnt get any restriction messages popping up when they login. ICMON.EXE is the red lightning tray icon which should not need to be disabled/disallowed.

[Dos_Box]

Give it a few weeks and you will all be complaining about the little blue shield which will replace the lightning icon when the new version of Sophos is rolled out.

[ConTheITGuy]

Looks very funky tho!

 

Andy.

[Frazer]

Sounds like its gone kerio-y :/

[ChrisH]

No you will be complaining that simple file sharing is enabled on half of your machines and will be saying to yourself "I thought SFS was turned off once a machine joined a domain......"

You will run into this with the new Sophos console...