Shoot The Messenger

I work in several primary schools, and needed a way to stop kids from installing Messenger on all the Lab PC's. We don't have 2K/XP everywhere (yet), so group policy wouldn't help me, and I don't like locking the pc's down 100%, since I like giving the kids a little bit of freedom in exploring the computers. MSN Messenger has a small flaw when installing: it doesn't ask you *where* to install it. Simply create two files, called 'Messenger' and 'MSNMessenger' (no extension) in the Program Files folder.

Set the attributes for these files to read only, and hidden. Then, just make sure the system is set not to 'show all files' (a good safety
precaution anyway, for computer novices). When someone tries to install Messenger, it will happily complete the installation process, yet it won't be installed! It just vanishes! Yes, it's not a perfect solution. Anyone with a clue would check, and delete those hidden files. But it definitly will slow them down. I've done this trick for over a year in 6 Primary schools, filled with pretty smart kids, and nobody has figured it out yet! [Rohan Beckett]