Preventing data manipulation and theft on public PCs(Windows Vista, 7)

             You want to set up a freely accessible PC for a presentation. It should have Internet access without any sort of data theft or manipulation.
             The best way to protect a public PC is to completely avoid using external drives. Vista and Windows 7 provide the option of blocking removable storage devices either for all users or for particular user accounts.
             First type ‘regedit’ in the input fi eld of the Start menu and press [Enter]. Confirm the query of the user accounts control with ‘Continue’ or ‘Yes’. Then navigate to the ‘HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\ RemovableStorageDevices’ key. If the sub key ‘RemovableStorageDevices’ has not yet been created here, create it with ‘Edit | New | Key’. Then click on the right side of the window, open ‘Edit | New | DWORD value’, type ‘Deny_All’ and press [Enter].
             Ensure that there is an underscore in the name. For editing, double-click the new entry, set its ‘Value’ to ‘1’ and confirm with ‘OK’. You will thus block access to all media classes of the removable storage devices for the current user. Close the registry. The guideline takes eff ect only after restarting the system. The user concerned now has neither read nor write access to all removable storage devices including memory cards; he/she only gets the message that Windows cannot access these.
               In order to block access across the system and for all users, create the value as described but in ‘HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\RemovableStorageDevices’.
               If you want to again deactivate the protection, reset the values to ‘0’ or delete the keys responsible.
               Obviously, you can also set up a USB write protection. It prevents data from getting copied on an inserted USB data carrier. However, it is also possible to view external data from a USB stick in the system. Hence, this method is not very secure.