I have a question or 7 ........

[-=DoW=- The Fan]

Ok, heres the low down.

I have 5 PCs in the house and have LEGAL music on my PC. It is shared within the house network, we are all one family.

My niece decided a short while back to install KAZAA (yuk). Okay, I got rid of the darn thing, but now I need a few questions answered, maybe someone out here can answer them

All PCs are running Win 2000, antivirused and updated regularly.

1. I need to have complete control over all computers without leaving my desk (at least when they are on). I know mmc works quite well, but when I try to use "Computer Management" on my nieces PC, it says "access denied" ? HUH? I set the PCs up myself. Any ideas on how to get around this "access denied"?

2. How can I stop any kind of "outside" sharing. Which ports do I have to close specifically for P2P networking, whilst still having the ability to share round "WORKGROUP"?

3. Do I really have to consider setting up a windows 2000 server system in my house to do this? I know W2000 Server does all this easily, coz I learned it in "school", I guessed MMC is MMC anywhere within the 2000 environment.

4. Without W2kServer, is there anyway whatsoever of setting times for the kids to gointo or access the Internet? Basically, they live above us, and dont really do the homework. I can unplug the network cables, or filter their Internet access on my router, but I would like to have something similar to the W2k Server story (or NT for that matter) where I can set "time boundaries" when they can go in and when not.

Any help on these issues would save THEM lots of money. She already knows she has to pay the extra costs of 33 Euros, but hey, now I can download what I want LOL - the charge of 60 Euros wont get any higher :-)

Thanks

[-=DoW=- MauryMac]

It sounds like a permissions issue on that PC, if its working fine for you on the others, i would suspect.

I THINK (maybe im going back to my win98 days here) if you specify computers to use User Accounts on another PC running NT or 2k, you may be able to specify login times on that one PC, and force them to use the accounts on this "master" PC. But, mow that i type this, i think that was windows 98 machines with a single win2k box running in a workgroup.

Maybe even consider using this:
http://www.vmware.com/landing/ws4_home.html
and setting up a PC to run a linux, novell, or windows server and just try it out. It works quite well, just be sure to have oodles of RAM :)
If you do go the server route, which i think you may have to, this will allow you to get it going on a PC you already have, either for testing, or permanently, depending on what you decide.