I need your help.

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ToroMan25

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Hi guys,

I want to help a community center and I need your help. They have 6 computers connected to the internet. I don't exactly know the topology of the network but they have everything set up the old way. They share a single printer. I am working on finding out exactly what is connected to what.

As a community center, everyone uses them. It is open for the people. Unfortunately all the computers don't have any sort of firewall or virus protection programs(norton had already expired). Mind you all the accounts on each machine do have admin privileges. Everybody downloads literally everything to those computers. I couldn't even believe what was happening. Two of the computers are off line and won't even start properly. Given the situation, such things are obviously expected. They said they can't afford tech support for all these problems. My friend and I decided to help them but I honestly don't know where to start.

Here is what I have done so far. I tried multiple times to get online and do the normal cleaning but it was unthinkable so I was forced to reformat those two computers. After that those machines are online but no printer access.

Here is what I am looking for to do. I want to completely clean all the 6 machines.( Warez Monsters guides is something for sure I am planning to stick with). If not reformat each and every one of them. They don't mind if I reformat all of them. Then create some sort of network. I don't know what kind of hardware I might need in this case since I don't know what exactly they have. They want basically the computers to be used for basic browsing, researching, preparing resumes...you know things like that. They have two printers in the building but they want to dedicated one for these machines. Beside creating a network, I want to use one of the computer as a server. Which controls the other 5(or use another computer from the other office). I am clueless on how I go by doing that. I want also to create guest accounts for the public where they have restricted privileges. No downloads( I don't know how to set up that on a guest account either). Anyway I should stop here for the time being. I will continue to ask more questions when you start helping me.

This is just what I am trying to do but if you think any other way please let me know. Guys I need your help.


Any help is greatly appreciated

Thanks
 
Ok a lot to cover. First I have some questions from you.

The 2 computers wont even boot? Does it give you any error message?
What OS are you using?

Please be more specific on the problems you are having.

Lets first worry about fixing the computers before we start to discuss how you can setup a server.
 
I would format every one of them and start over. Create only one user account and give it limited privilidges. Make it with no password and so that the user can't change the password. Get an inexpensive router for internet access and a switch to connect them all. If you want to go the server/client route, you can restrict users even more. You can always enable content advisor in IE and block almost everything. Unless you have a clever user that knows how to get around it.
 
There's plenty of free anti-virus program and firewall program, you can use those. It's not like it's a business or anything so the vendor wouldn't really mind if you install it on just 5-6 computers. But when in doubt, always get permission and ask the vendor.

What Operating System will you be running on these computers?

What I would do is definitely reformat and reinstall, install all the basic applications. If these system are all the same hardware specs, I would recommend using an imaging software like Norton Ghost to image the OS to a default state, making restoration a lot easier next time if anything goes wrong.

Password protect the administrator account, and create limited users!

If you want to save money, there are plenty of free imaging software.

You can download OpenOffice, which is free and is an alternative to Microsoft Office. You can use it to create documents and resume just like word.

For the networking part. What type of Internet are they going to use? Broadband like DSL or Cable? A basic LAN consist of computers and switches in order to share resources back and forth. If you need Internet, then you get a router. A basic home router will do for broad band Internet, just make sure there's enough ports to go around, if not, add a switch.

For remote management, I suggest TightVNC, it's free, you can install the server on each machine and install the viewer on one machine. That one machine can view all the activity of the other computers.

You need to control web access like block URL and bad contents? Use EzProxy, this program is free too. Just install it on one of the machine and point all the others computer web browser to this machine and you can centralize administration.
 
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