alternative to novell?

ok google has not been very friendly to me today. Basically, my brother caused some havoc on my local network (new virus that wasn't detected by avg :mad: ). Anyway, I'm sick of him complaining when I lock his account down because then he can't do certain things, and when I give him rights again, this happens. So, I've been looking for something similar to novell to manage his permissions, basically, I only want him to be able to download things and go to certain sites if someone llike me or my mom are logged in. So if anyone has some good suggestions that would be great...till then I'm just going to use the group policy editor but I would like some better tools. Thanks.

Novell... eww... we're about ready to climb down off that fat elephant at work (finally). I don't suppose you could get your hands on Active Directory... I think that's what it is called. It's an MS product. Other than that, I'm not really sure.

well I can set up a domain, but that means I have to set it up for everyone and I just don't feel like running a domain at home (it's a pain enough running it at work). Thanks though, that's why I was looking for something similar to novell zenworks, that way I can just configure and go, no domain.

Beat him up. Worked for me.

Surely IE has a way of blocking site access? Or maybe you could give him a login and set IE to use a proxy that doesn't exist, and don't use it on the other accounts? Of course that depends how knowledgeable he is.

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Surely IE has a way of blocking site access?

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Sure, to block sites in IE
go to Tools/Internet Options
click security then "Restricted Sites" and then Sites

we don't use IE in this house...mozilla/firefox all the way....and the more efficient way of blocking sites is through the hosts file and I already have a slew of stuff in it...however, I just need to stop him from downloading altogether...

Disconnect the cat5? ;) Better yet... build a remote switch into the line.

If you wanted to restrict a user from running downloaded software you could have a look at software restriction policies. You can manipulate software restrictions from Administrative Tools->Local Security Policy. Possibly, you could set the default to disallowed and only allow programs in "C:\Program Files" and "C:\Windows" to run. Be careful that you don't lock yourself out.

that could work, but then I have to deal with allowing a ton of programs...I think im just going to build him his own pc from spare parts, deep freeze it, and block most of his ports in case he does get another virus on there at least it won't spread...and all you have to do is reboot to get rid of it.