Some advanced help needed.

[Shadowdragoon]

I got a rather tricky problem or two.
Ive been looking for ways to block web pages, here is the setup.

a School network.
no money for licenses. so can only use freeware or local files (host is a good example.)
a externaly managed proxy server.
Windows 2000/XP Pro (Norwegian language version)

ive been looking into this for a while.
i have tried using a hosts file, but it dont work, i suspect the proxy is the reason. the site ive been using for info is This site. (http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.htm)
and yes, i have asked the computer not to use proxy for local adresses.

now hte second trubble, Instant messengers.. MSN and Yahoo.
atleast MSN you need administrators rights to install. (oh the fun to read the Event List and see all the failed installs..) but unfortunatly some of the computers have special software that requires the user to haave admin rights to use. and here is ofcourse the people who love MSN the most.. google resutls only brough forth a lsit of expensive software, anny ideas on this.. Yahoo messenger i have seen a bit of, aparently it can be installed by the users, anny ideas on this one? been looking for ways to get these problems "fixed" a while, not easy. please help..

[DocBobo]

The first idea is to block all outgoing ports for mesengers in the firewall.
Here's a list (http://www.chebucto.ns.ca/~rakerman/port-table.html#WinMess) which ports to block. MSN should be rather dead after blocking those.
Actually, it was even better if you block everything and just let a few selected ports (for ftp, http, https, pop3, smtp and so on) pass.

Second, why exactly do the users need administrator rights? Wouldn't it be better to find the directories the programs need to write to and give the users the corresponding rights (but leave them standard users)? If they need to write to the registry.... well, then I'd need to check with an admin friend, maybe he can offer some hints what to do.

What software do you use as a proxy?

[Shadowdragoon]

As for the proxy its externaly, and we got no way to get them to block or open ports, and they are secretive about if for security reasons. all i have managed to find out about it is that we are behind a stelthed firewall..

For the question about userrights, its a special pharmacy (sp) program, its normaly ony used in a closed network, why it needs administrative rights is a question i have asked myself.
it had to do whit the programs needs to acess the computersoftware, and the dependancy of the server that they conect to.
(that software is noting but trubble, it got so manny settings to set that you are sure to forgett one, and crash it when using it, or trying to print from it..)