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Controlling changes made on public Church PCs...

Posted: Tue May 08, 2012 5:59 pm
by inventor96
... such as FHC computers.

We have had a major problem recently with users of the FHC PCs changing quite a bit of settings on the computers that are messing up the experience for others:(, and creating a lot of frustration for us Techs in the Stake:mad:. Leading me to ask two questions here:confused::

1. What software recommendations are there (such as DeepFreeze) to install on the computers that are "open to the public" to keep them from changing settings? Or if they do change the settings, all we need to do is reboot the PC to restore settings to what we need...

2. What all does Church HQ do remotely with church computers via LANDesk and such? As much of a complete list would be nice for future reference! Would using something like DeepFreeze (or an equivalent) prevent something they do from happening correctly or stop it from "sticking"?

A quick response would be nice so we can get stuff in place ASAP to stop the disappointments and frustration...
Thanks for any ideas!

Posted: Tue May 08, 2012 6:19 pm
by russellhltn
DeepFreeze is available via LANDesk if you want to go that route. I manage my FHC's PCs by using locked down Patron accounts that prevents them from doing much damage.

Posted: Tue May 08, 2012 7:37 pm
by jdlessley
While an STS I installed DeepFreeze on all FHC computers. Prior to having DeepFreeze installed we had the same problems with patrons and some FHC workers reconfiguring computers. After DeepFreeze all was well. By following the Church instructions for using DeepFreeze there is no conflict with updates or LANDesk's functionality.

All the information about both DeepFreeze and LANDesk was available at the FHC Director portal at FamilySearch. Since it has been over two years since I last had access I cannot verify what is there now.

Posted: Tue May 08, 2012 10:31 pm
by inventor96
DeepFreeze will work for us. Thanks for the suggestions!

Posted: Sun May 13, 2012 7:19 pm
by JamesAnderson
Another thing that happened a year or two ago that might be a factor in PC settings being screwed up is something that was put on before we even got the Dell Optiplex 780. If you have one of those, this might be messing up a couple of things.

The problem was it kept tossing the updates, some critical such as some Flash updates, for example it was throwing out everything beyond version 8, nFS requires version 9 at minimum. It was also screwing up the FHC Portal page as that needs certain certificates to run properly and get you into some of the pay sites that we get at FHCs and do that properly.

Then I found it. A small little program hidden in the list of programs in the 'add/remove programs' area of control panel. This was called 'Microsoft User Hive Cleanup Service'. Once I uninstalled that, we never had any problems again of the kind I have described.