PS6 or 7 on a Fully Locked down hard drive

[Publishing]

We are soon to be upgraded to Windows XP Pro, with no write access to our hard drives. We are also, hopefully, to be upgraded to PS7. Does anyone no of any issues that may occur with PS (and illustrator 10 for that matter) which may occur with no write access to the hard drive?

Many thanks

 

[jimoblak]

No write access? What is the point? Why not just use the demo version of Photoshop without the 'Save' option?

You may run into trouble with the temp files that are written to the HD.

 

[Publishing]

Our meglomatic IT department are wanting to have 100% management over all users. There's no real problem with saving files to the network (apart from speed) but i'm more concerned about the temp files

 

[jimoblak]

Your best bet is to set up a sample XP station and run the Photoshop demo (

http://www.adobe.com/products/tryadobe/main.jhtml)

to see if the temp (aka - scratch disk files) will cause a problem.

You will not want to use your network drives as scratch disks unless you have a lightning fast network.

I am not familiar with locking entire HDs... will this conflict with the Windows Update that is required every few days for security patches?

You should be able to set up user-managed accounts on an XP system, and limit writing to the user's own directories.

 

[jrpatdlgs]

Publishing,
You have my sympathy. Our IT shop also has everything locked down and I guarrantee you that it does cause problems for power users. ("Power" in this instance meaning any software other than MSOffice.) In order for my scanner software and for photoshop and PageMaker to work correctly IT had to make me a "Local Administrator" because those pieces of software (and others) expect to be able to access the C: drive and they can't do it if the C: drive is locked down. We've been told that more severe restrictions are coming soon and that I'll lose my Local Admin priviledges. When that happens I guess I get to sit here and twiddle my thumbs. Maybe we can start an on-line knitting club or something?
John

 

[jimoblak]

Instead of entirely locking down the hard drive, would your IT department consider a security software that places other intolerable restrictions?...

http://www.smartstuff.com/fps/fpsinfo.html

Using a package like this can prevent users from running their own programs from removable media (game or other software installers), playing unnecessary media (MP3, avi, QT), and all the other things that make computers worth using.

This software could limit the necessary writing to your hard drive to a defined location.

 

[Publishing]

Oh dear. It sounds like i'm going to have plenty of fun and games with IT!!

I will certainly endeavour to get my hands on an XP pilot box before they migrate us. And also look at other security software, but knowing our organisation, that'll take at least a year of testing and packaging!!.

But whose fault is this?? Adobe? Microsoft or my IT department?? It all seems a bit of a farce

And also, thanks for the advice everyone.