How to force IE to return to homepage

[brshoemak]

This is driving me kinda crazy. This is the story. I have the setup a patient education computer in a waiting for a company I work for. They want a patient to be able to get online and look at diabetes information and also use it for general internet purposes while they wait. However, they want IE to return to a set homepage after a certain interval (15-20min) so they next patient who may use it isn't presented with someone's MySpace account or whatever. I looked at kiosk mode of IE but it doesn't have the option I'm looking for.

If anyone knows how to force IE to return to a certain page (within the same IE window) after a given time interval please let me know. Thanks in advance.

-brshoemak

 

[talyn00]

there's no feature in IE that does this. You'll probably need an external program that runs in the background to reset the page after a period of inactivity. Its probably best if the program kill the browser sessions and restarts instead of simply going back to the homepage, because the next person that comes on the machine can simply hit back a few times and maybe find themselves on someone else's email account or some other sensitive accounts.

 

[corkyg]

Just teach them to click on "HOME" when they are done.

 

[ForumMaster]

Originally posted by: talyn00
there's no feature in IE that does this. You'll probably need an external program that runs in the background to reset the page after a period of inactivity. Its probably best if the program kill the browser sessions and restarts instead of simply going back to the homepage, because the next person that comes on the machine can simply hit back a few times and maybe find themselves on someone else's email account or some other sensitive accounts.

true. the session should be terminated to prevent anything such thing...

 

[BadThad]

I hope there's adequate malware protection on the system.

 

[brshoemak]

Originally posted by: BadThad
I hope there's adequate malware protection on the system.

close enough, it's running MS Anti-Spyware and Norton Corporate AV. i have it locked down pretty tightly with Group Policies (restricted drive access, network, printing, downloads, Windows Update, etc.) but you never know with some people. the problem i am having is that i am fighting against administration that wants it secured tightly but wants to be able to go in and change settings whenever they want.

I'll look into those suggestions about closing the session which is what i was going to do from the beginning. Maybe setup a .bat file and make it a Scheduled Task set to run every 15 or 20 min.

 

[stevty2889]

Originally posted by: brshoemak

Originally posted by: BadThad
I hope there's adequate malware protection on the system.

close enough, it's running MS Anti-Spyware and Norton Corporate AV. i have it locked down pretty tightly with Group Policies (restricted drive access, network, printing, downloads, Windows Update, etc.) but you never know with some people. the problem i am having is that i am fighting against administration that wants it secured tightly but wants to be able to go in and change settings whenever they want.

I'll look into those suggestions about closing the session which is what i was going to do from the beginning. Maybe setup a .bat file and make it a Scheduled Task set to run every 15 or 20 min.

But won't that just kill it when people are actualy using it as well?

 

[brshoemak]

yes it may kick someone out as they are using it. i believe the administration wants to use that 15-20 min interval more like a time limit so people don't just sit there all day on MySpace. they feel a reset of IE would persuade someone to get up and allow another person in the waiting room to use it. also, the wait times are not going to be more than 15 minutes so I couldn't see someone's session on the computer lasting more than 15 minutes anyway.

there is not really a good solution as far as timing goes but i found a program called CMDOW that lets me write a decent .bat file so i can easily close out all open windows and then open IE (which will default back to the home page i want). it's great to be at the mercy of people who want something done exactly so and don't understand that it ain't always gonna happen how they want it, oh well.