IT Management for Internet Cafés / Cybercafés

Internet cafés (or cybercafés) are a growing industry in the technology world, especially in emerging markets. However, many of these Internet cafe owners face one big problem. How could the IT manager of these multi-user machines quickly restore the systems after every user’s session and recover if one of their PC terminals has gotten infected with a virus or other malware, the background image has changed, Windows won’t bootup, or is now otherwise less than optimally configured? Many public users may sign into their personal account on websites and so inadvertently leave that personal information that the next user may be able to view. Is there a solution available today that could automatically restore these shared machines?

Keeping these public access computers optimally configured is a much bigger problem in internet cafés since the users need to be allowed a lot more flexibility-of-use on these machines, that is, not limited in their access to Windows functions. But then owners find that the setup on these shared computers degrades over time and that resetting them occasionally is an unmanageable hassle as they typically have to deal with dozens of systems. So most cybercafé owners either leave all those unwanted changes made from one user to the next; or lockdown the machines to restrict access to certain aspects of the machines and so offer a less-than-ideal session to their users; or spend lots of their time and resources constantly restoring the systems manually, trying to undo the various changes made by users; or infrequently re-imaging the machines offering a sub-optimal experience to most users most of the time. Some IT administrators create external backups or images as part of their recovery solution. However, these external backups take a lot of time and space in creating the backup and in restoring this data back onto the multi-user computers, during which time the machines are unavailable. Once one user’s session is over, the ideal solution would automatically restore that machine back to a pristine IT admin-defined state so that it’s perfectly configured for the next user.

The Wishlist: What Would Make Your Job Easier?

The perfect solution for internet cafés would be something that restores the public access PCs in just seconds and can recover a system from any given common disaster scenario — from a hacked registry, illegally installed programs, incidental system degradation, software corruptions, virus infections, Windows boot failure, et cetera — and seamlessly work in the background. Preferably, there ought to be some means of centrally managing or remotely manipulating these internet café PCs, as it would be very inconvenient to walk around to each of the various machines individually and manually configure them one at a time.

Vaccinating Internet Cafe Machines against Unwanted Changes

Reboot Restore Rx Professional is an auto-restore solution that can be set to restore the cafe’s machine back to a predefined configuration (or “baseline”) on every reboot, logoff, hourly, daily, on the first boot of the day, weekly, or if the PC is inactive for a specified period of time. Reboot Restore Rx Professional also makes it easy to update this baseline that the workstations continually return to. Download the latest Windows updates, new anti-virus definitions, program updates, et cetera and press a single button and these changes can be incorporated into the current baseline. The protection never needs to be turned off. When the next restore-to-baseline occurs the system state will have these latest Windows updates, virus scan updates, program updates, et cetera.

Why Should You Choose Reboot Restore Rx Professional?

Most other reboot-to-restore software are write-protection software. They prevent Windows from making changes by intercepting and redirecting these write commands to a buffer space. In order to update the baseline the write-protection needs to be turned off. This usually requires a restart. In this naked system state, if an unwanted change occurs — results in a driver conflict, is corrupted, or otherwise somehow causes problems — these other restore-on-reboot type software aren’t able to restore back to an earlier baseline. There may then be no other recourse but to troubleshoot this issue or, worse still, reinstall Windows from scratch.
Many of these competitors can only restore on reboot. Reboot Restore Rx Professional allows you to…
Automatically restore-to-baseline on every Windows startup or reboot Automatically restore-to-baseline on every Windows startup or reboot?
Automatically restore-to-baseline on every Windows startup or reboot
Automatically restore-to-baseline on every logoff
Automatically restore-to-baseline every hour
Automatically restore-to-baseline every day at a specified time
Automatically restore-to-baseline every week on a specified day of the week and time
Automatically restore-to-baseline after a period of inactivity
Manually restore on an ad hoc basis.
If you have more than a few terminals, then a central management console is indispensable. Many of these competing products require you to purchase their enterprise version at a considerable extra cost. But Reboot Restore Rx Professional comes with its own Remote Management Console (RMC) at no additional charge. This allows Internet café IT managers to centrally manage all their PCs from a single interface. All this enables you to focus on your business. Let us worry about having your machines optimally configured to offer the best web surfing experience to your customers.

Keylogging, Identity Theft, PXE Boot-ups, and Other Rogue BIOS Bypass Boot-ups

Reboot Restore Rx Professional also enables you to restrict usage of external USB ports and optical media drives. This means that the cybercafe visitors aren’t able to install keylogging apps that monitor and record password input and credit card entry and allow these thieves to access this sensitive information. Many innovative hackers have also been able to boot their own operating systems from their external media. Once someone has gained access through these rogue channels they could then simply uninstall Windows or otherwise mess up your systems. Reboot Restore Rx Professional can help you manage these threats by limiting the usage of these access points.

Reboot Restore Rx Professional is an all-in-one solution to keep your machines always available and perfectly configured.