WELCOME TO WINGUARD (V.2) !!! Hello! My name is Frederick Wasti, and I am directing this note toward other educators, people who should benefit greatly from the use of WinGuard. First, let me say "Thank-You!" for trying out WinGuard. I do believe you will find that WinGuard offers the protections needed to allow your students to safely use the Windows interface, without easily damaging Windows or the files accessible through it. In this note I will try to provide a description of WinGuard's usefulness in the school environment, some suggestions and examples for configuring WinGuard to protect your school's Windows computers, and an explanation of the legal and ethical considerations for evaluating the shareware version of WinGuard. THE NEED FOR WINGUARD IN THE SCHOOL The use by schools of personal computers equipped with Windows is on a dramatic increase, and the ease of use that Windows offers makes certain that this trend will continue. However, students will tend to view the Windows environment as a "playground" to explore, and occasional damage (usually, but not always, accidental) is likely to occur (unless security provisions, such as the use of WinGuard, are employed to reduce this likelihood). As a teacher, myself, I know how easy it is for students to wreak havoc on a Windows PC; yet the Windows interface is so ideal for classroom and computer lab use that teachers would not want to keep students away from it. This dilemma may be solved by the use of WinGuard, which allows student access to only the functions and applications that the teacher may wish, shielding the more "sensitive" features and programs away from young minds and fingers. If you are in charge of one or more Windows PCs at your school, you probably have already had to deal with some "breakdowns" caused by students. Whether accidental or intentional, such events can lock out computers from further use until someone with enough time and expertise can get them back on line. Furthermore, some of these problems may be very time-consuming and/or difficult to repair, especially if the person who tries to fix them is not already a Windows "guru". Wouldn't it be better to be able to prevent many such disasters by using WinGuard? This would seem to me to be an obvious case of an ounce of prevention being preferable to a pound of cure. SUGGESTIONS FOR USING WINGUARD IN THE SCHOOL As I see it, WinGuard offers three main areas of password- secured protection, as follows: l. WinGuard provides for the automatic setting of seven increasingly restrictive protection levels (eight, actually, including a "zero protection" setting). These safeguards run from merely preventing students from making spatial changes, to keeping them from accessing virtually all Program Manager file functions. At Carver High School, where I teach (biology), we originally tried using Protection Level 4 on all the computers in our computer lab, then increased the protection to Level 5 for a while, and now have the machines configured for Level 6. (You will have to experiment, and then decide which protection level best fits your particular school situation.) As an example of what WinGuard can do, under Level 6 our computers have the following safeguards in place: The Save Settings on Exit command in the Program Manager Options Menu is inactivated (appearing "dimmed" or "grayed out"), which prevents students from being permanently rearranging the desktop. Therefore, anytime that Windows is started, Program Manager will come up with the original desktop layout intact. At Level 6, our computers are also protected from students either deleting, modifying, or creating Program Manager groups or items (icons); if a student were to try to use any of the File Menu's New, Move, Copy, or Delete commands, he/she would find that all of these potentially destructive commands (and, in fact, the entire Properties dialog box) would be inactivated. Finally, our students are not be able to start any program not already present as an icon, since the Run command in the File Menu is disabled, as well. 2. WinGuard will also allow you to hide one or more of the Program Manager program groups (such as Main, Accessories, Applications, etc.), preventing students from accessing (or perhaps even knowing about) such groups. This is, perhaps, the most useful new function provided by Version 2 of WinGuard. If you wish merely to hide a few selected icons that are present in several different groups, it might be advantageous to create a Program Manager group just for them, and then to move each of them to your new group (by dragging and dropping with the mouse) before hiding the group with WinGuard. Here at C.H.S., we have dragged several icons (such as File Manager and Windows Setup) to a new group (which our computer teacher named "MyStuff"), and then hid that group and its icons using WinGuard. If you elected to have a WinGuard group created for you during installation, you may use that group for the one to hide (after copying or moving WinGuard's own icon to another group, of course, in order that you may still be able to easily access WinGuard after the WinGuard group has been hidden). You should find that icons for File Manager, System Editor, Windows Setup, and Control Panel are already installed in the WinGuard group, so you could delete any of these icons from other groups, if you wanted (although you might wish to check out the special Control Panel features that WinGuard offers, further below). By the way, if you are not yet familiar with drag-and-drop procedures, you might wish to know that you may copy or move Program Manager icons from one program group to another by using just the mouse. For example, if you point at an icon, and then click on it with the left mouse button, you may drag it (by continuing to hold the button down) to another group, and then drop it there (by releasing the button), in order to move it. If you hold down the Ctrl key while performing the above procedure, you will copy the icon, instead of moving it. 3. WinGuard will even let you hide one or more of the icons in the Control Panel window, preventing students from accessing the Program Manager settings for such features as colors, drivers, fonts, printers, virtual memory, and desktop details (such as wallpaper or screen savers), even if you have not hidden Control Panel's own Program Manager icon. (In order that YOU would still have access to any Control Panel icon that is hidden, WinGuard's Control Panel Icons Window provides command buttons for all of the regular Control Panel functions.) OBTAINING HELP WHILE USING WINGUARD WinGuard provides several ways to obtain help, including (but not limited to) this file. (I think you will find that WinGuard provides more ways of obtaining help than do most other Windows utilities.) If you click with the right mouse button on any Main Window command button, you will find that you may obtain context- sensitive help from WinGuard's main help file, without having to go to the help contents first to find the topic. You may also receive help for a specific WinGuard control by pressing the F1 key while that feature has the focus, or you may simply use the Help Menu in any of the WinGuard windows. You will find, as you use WinGuard's Main Window, that the text message in the Status Bar at the bottom of the window changes as you move the mouse (or change the focus with the Tab key). The Status Bar will show the current protection level at start-up (regardless of where the cursor is or where the focus is), and at any time the mouse is moved over the Main Window's background. Otherwise, the Status Bar will provide a short message relating to the command button that the mouse cursor is over (or to which the Tab key moves the focus). If you ever have any question about any aspect of WinGuard, please feel free to contact me (Frederick Wasti, c/o Cetus Software, PO Box 700, Carver, MA 02330), and I will be glad to provide any help you might need. SHAREWARE EVALUATION OF WINGUARD To see how WinGuard works, I encourage you to try out WinGuard on one of your Windows PCs. Under the terms of WinGuard's shareware evaluation, you may install and thoroughly test WinGuard on ONE computer for a period of 30 days (at which time you MUST either obtain a registered license to continue using it, OR you must uninstall it completely). Please note that it is NOT legal NOR is it ethical to install the shareware version of WinGuard on MORE than ONE computer, NOR may it be legally or ethically used for long-term protection (greater than the 30-day evaluation period). If you decide to continue using WinGuard on your own computer, or if you wish to install the program on other computers at your school, you MUST register your use of the program; then you may permanently use the registered version on your own computer (if you obtained an Individual License), or on all the computers in your school (if a Site License were purchased). The shareware version of WinGuard is being distributed on a trial basis, strictly for evaluation purposes, but it IS a fully functional program (that is, it is not "crippled" in any way), so that you may fairly judge it thoroughly. If you do register your use of WinGuard, you will receive on disk a copy of the latest version of it, without any of the (not too subtle) "reminder screens". A single-user Individual License for WinGuard may be obtained for $14.95. A Site License for the use of WinGuard on ANY number of computers at ONE specific school location (but NOT for an entire school system) may be obtained for $74.95. An individual who has registered a previous version of WinGuard may upgrade to Version 2 for $9.95; an institution that has registered an earlier version may upgrade for $49.95 (for each site). Note that each of the above prices includes shipping and handling costs. Payment may be made by check or money order, but school purchase orders are also welcome (and I DO know that many schools will have to register this way). You may obtain a registration form for viewing or printing by opening regform.txt (which is just a registration form), or either winguard.txt or winguard.wri (both of which contain registration forms). You may also simply print out a registration form directly from WinGuard's help file while running WinGuard (by clicking on the Registration Form item in the Help Menu of WinGuard's Main Window). Or, you may simply provide ALL of the registration information in a separate letter or purchase order. An Individual License entitles ONE individually registered user to install and use WinGuard on any computer(s) that he/she PERSONALLY owns, either at home or at school, but he/she may NOT allow his/her registered copy to be installed or used on ANY other computer(s), whether belonging to another individual or to a school. A Site License entitles ONE individual school building to install and use WinGuard on ANY number of computers belonging to that school at that specific school location. A school system that intends to install and use WinGuard in more than one school MUST obtain a SEPARATE site license for EACH school. Any copy of WinGuard registered to a particular school may NOT be distributed beyond the boundaries of that school. However, any person is permitted (and, in fact, ENCOURAGED) to distribute the UNregistered, shareware version of WinGuard to other individuals, as long as ALL of its files are distributed together. For further information on WinGuard registration, or to obtain on disk a copy of the shareware version of WinGuard for distribution and evaluation, please feel free to contact me at Cetus Software (PO Box 700, Carver, MA 02330). IN CONCLUSION I hope that you will give the shareware version of WinGuard a thorough test on one of your school computers, and that you will then find it to be useful. As a teacher, I know that it IS a useful educational tool, and so I look forward to hearing from you. If you have any questions, please drop me a note (Frederick Wasti, c/o Cetus Software, PO Box 700, Carver, MA 02330 USA). THANK-YOU FOR TRYING OUT WINGUARD !!!