Cutom Installation Procedure

[Aiby]

I work for a large organisation and have finally managed to customise my, not too flashy rainmeter installation (see image below), with help from you all here on the forum.

I'll be deploying this to approximatley 400 computers and was wondering if someone could please guide me as to how i could customise the installation to only install my version/code/skin only?

[jsmorley]

You really can't lock Rainmeter down. Unless you remove access to the internet from their computers, shoot superglue in all the USB ports, and give them only "Guest" access to the system, you can't stop users from installing new skins, removing yours, editing yours, writing their own, etc. You can do things like have the "SkinPath" for the installations set to a read-only network folder, but Rainmeter won't function if the Rainmeter.ini settings file is not writable by the local machine and current account, so there are a hundred ways to get around pretty much anything you do.

If you want my own personal opinion, and I worked in IT management for 20 years for a very large company, I personally would keelhaul anyone who suggested using Rainmeter in a corporate environment, and would make it a company policy that it not be installed by users on company computers. It is designed for personal use, is hideously insecure in an environment where computers are accessible, and has absolutely nothing about it that supports any kind of "locked down" installation. In fact, it is actively and gleefully opposed in principle and design to being locked down in any way.

[Aiby]

Thanks for the info mate. The DG still wants to go ahead with it though so will have to play it by ear. I guess my first tactic will be to set a GPO in place so even if the user changes the skin and info, etc, the Rainmeter GPO will overite this when a staff logs in. I'll also set the notifications area in Windows 7 to auto-hide the Rainmeter icon (taskbar / notifications area) so hopefully most of the users won't be too clued in to worry about this. Neverthess, the DG is happy that the Rainmeter app looks the part - "Looks like a 21st century app and a Windows Gadget".

This is all trial and error but thanks again jsmorley for pointing those issues out....