I need a small bit of help.

Hi there,

I've never done any software programming before... So I need a little help on how to do something, should be pretty simple I think...

Ok on my school's computers they have lots of programs that we're allowed ot use over weekends, in evenings etc. The problem is they're having to disable some of them (like MSN Messenger, all the games, etc.) because some stupid people are using them during lesson time. What I've done is written a PHP script to time things. And what I need is when an application launches it calls http://server19.intranet.(domain)/Student/App/?appname=(Name of Application)&Computer=(Computer Name)&User=(User's username). If the page returns 'deny' it needs to show a message and not open the program, if the page returns 'allow' it needs to open the program and if fails to get a response it opens the program.

The computers run Windows XP Professional. It would be possible to install something on each machine if we have to but if possible we'd rather just have some script or something on the server itself (everyone has to login through the server to access the computers). The server runs Windows Server 2003 (Standard I believe, may be Enterprise, I can check if it matters).

If anyone can suggest any ways on how to do this I'd be very greatful.

If you want to restrict program usage you can do by setting each user account so they're not admin. There's features within XP which can stop them from doing certain things as far as i know

There are, but they're very basic. We need to restrict number of times used, log number of times used and time used, block usage at certain times, block usage if X number of other people are using them, etc., which I've written a backend script to do but have no idea how to check for allow or deny at the URL before opening.

You could create a program that scans through the current process or enumerates all the windows every 20 seconds or so and checks to see if the MSN Messenger, Minesweeper, etc. class/program name is among them. If it is, it could check the time and if the time was incorrect for the program, it could terminate the process or write the event to a log file somewhere.