No Soup for IE: Windows Update Only
May 11th, 2006
Now, if it were for more people, or for a Windows XP installation, I would try out IE URL Lock.
Instead, I am setting up a Celeron 300 system with Windows 98. It a way, you almost feel safer because nobody is writing viruses for it right now.
Yeah, right.
So there are a few security updates that Win98 can get off of Windows Update. Otherwise, I don’t want Internet Explorer - any version of Iinternet Explorer - going anywhere, for safety reasons. So, first I install Mozilla Firefox for a generally safer browsing experience.
Next, I go to the Internet Options control panel. This can be gotten by:
- Right clicking on the blue ‘e’ and selecting ‘properties’ from the menu that appears.
- Start Menu >> Control Panel >> Internet Options (In Classic View, or Win98)
- Start Menu >> Control Panel >> Network and Internet Connections >> Set up or change you Internet connection (In Category View)
I select the Connections tab.
I click the LAN Settings… button.
I check the box ‘Use proxy server for your LAN‘
I put ‘nada‘ in the ‘Address:‘ box.
I click the ‘Advanced‘ button.
In the ‘Exceptions‘ box, I put the following:
*.microsoft.com;*.windowsupdate.com
I click 3 seperate ‘OK‘ buttons.
…
And that’s it. ‘nada’ is a randomly picked word - there is no web resource just called ‘nada’, so many requests fail. Requests to microsoft.com and windowsupdate.com ignore this rule. It only applies to webpages in Internet Explorer and Windows explorer.
To reverse, go through the steps until you get to ‘Use proxy server for your LAN‘. Uncheck the box.
For even more technical users, these are the registry keys modified by my installation of Windows XP SP2:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_USERS\S-1-5-21-659185403-1097818416-584731005-6495\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings]
“ProxyEnable”=dword:00000001
“ProxyServer”=”nada”
“ProxyOverride”=”*.microsoft.com;*.windowsupdate.com”
This technique is the same general idea given in PC Magazine. There are also several techniques on Novell’s website.
-Sud.
EDIT: This setting also effects MSN messenger, preventing it from any communication with the outside world.
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