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From: act@softserver.canberra.edu.au (Andrew Turner)
Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.misc
Subject: PREVENTING Booting of Drive A: - Sugestions PLEASE!!
Message-ID: <1991Apr23.004828.5723@csc.canberra.edu.au>
Date: 23 Apr 91 00:48:28 GMT
Article-I.D.: csc.1991Apr23.004828.5723
Sender: news@csc.canberra.edu.au
Organization: University of Canberra
Lines: 29


To minimise and manage virusses at our institution
I wish to prevent PC's being booted off Drive A: and only permit booting off
the Hard Disk.  This of course immediately presents a management problem of
what to do if the Hard Disk goes bad and I need to boot off a floppy. So
ideally any solution needs to address this situation. Two possibilities
spring to mind: 

a.	Use of a ROM. This would sit in the appropriate address space and be
	detected during the BIOS boot.  The code would need to at least
	prevent floppy boots and desirably check for a floppy with a particular
	label and if detected permit the floppy boot.  This would overcome the
	problem of a clobbered hard disk.

b.	Use of hardware modifications connected to a key switch mounted on
	the case which would be used to enable/disable floppy boots.  On our
	machines the keyboard lock could be used for this purpose.

If you have a solution that does not address all the problems still respond.
ALL suggestions help welcome.  For option a., actual code and/or technical
specs would be appreciated.  For option b., specific details please. We run
both Wyse 286's and PROTECH 386sx's(towers) all with hard disks.  If I get
a meaningful response I'll post a summary.

-- 
 Andrew Turner   :-)    | E-mail : act@csc.canberra.edu.au
 Comp. Services Centre  | +61 6 2522414 / +61 6 2522401
 University of Canberra |________________  fax +61 6 2522400
 P.O. Box 1 BELCONNEN ACT 2616 AUSTRALIA |