looking for some software

[killtakular]

Recently, i have found myself (and others in the household) using other computers that are not there own.

This causes a few issues

Files get lost
Media is not all localized and is hard to find
Settings on computers change (desktops and such)
and, of course, many other issues...

Now, a logical fix for this would be to set up user accounts for everyone on every computer, of course, this would only solve my third issue, and settings wouldnt be cahnged...

i guess what im trying to say is that i am looking for a network software that would allow the four computers in this house (and the one server i will be adding) to be basically workstations, were settings would carry over, files could be saved to the user account, and would be accessible on any computer, and, so on

i know my school incorperated a software by novel to do this, and, it was a pretty solid system....unfortunatly, i cant remember the software name, or, what it was even called....so, im SOL as to where i should start to look for a software that would allow me to do this...

Any help would be greatly appreciated.....

 

[Camper]

What Server OS will you be running on the server your adding? You can use Group Policy, with Active Directory and Shared Folders to solve most of those issues. These are all part of the Windows Server 2000/2003 family. The only program I know my school runs is called Deep Freeze. This might be it. http://www.faronics.com/

 

[tlarkin]

What Server OS will you be running on the server your adding? You can use Group Policy, with Active Directory and Shared Folders to solve most of those issues. These are all part of the Windows Server 2000/2003 family. The only program I know my school runs is called Deep Freeze. This might be it. http://www.faronics.com/

active directory for a home network? Is that not a bit over kill? Plus every OS would have to be able to connect to a domain, meaning only XP pro, vista business, and vista ultimate would be able to accomplish this. Any xp or vista home would not benefit from this at all.

here is what you do. Slap together a cheap PC and toss in a HD into it. Give it a static IP address, and map the drive on all of your windows machines. Then have each person create a folder on the network shared computer and have them dump their files into it. If you want to save even more money use Linux to do this. then you can set up ownership for folders and only the owner of the folder can read/write/execute from it. You can do that in windows too I suppose, but you'd be forced to purchase a new license.

Deep freeze just locks down a whole volume as read only, and then gives the user a scratch disk to write to and save data too, its not really a solution he is looking for.