Blocking Access to Use Microsoft OneDrive
 

As loyal readers of this forum know, I manage computers, iPhones and other electronic items (from WAY afar, remotely) of my two elderly parents. Let's just call them Mr. and Mrs. jsnydcsa Snr. It has brought up all sorts of issues, many solved right here in this forum (see, e.g. getting Malwarebytes, TeamViewer, the consumption of lots of whisky).

I've got a new one. Somehow, Mr. jsnydcsa Snr. has managed to move virtually his entire laptop hard drive's contents (basically Windows "Documents" "Pictures" folders and his Outlook .pst file) OFF his physical C: Drive ONTO OneDrive and thus now, everything is on OneDrive. Mr. jsnydcsa Snr. claims the only way this happened was that Microsoft Edge (I typed Edge, that's not a mistake) must have "tricked him" (that's a direct quote) into uploading everything off his C: drive and into OneDrive. Frankly, I think he was trying to do some sort of backup of his hard drive and the "backup" ended up removed from his C: drive and is now on OneDrive. (And, yes, I do remotely manage his backups. He's stubborn and I believe was trying to do it himself but will not admit it). While Edge is on his machine. It's hidden from him and he is strictly instructed to use Firefox. Obviously, given age, distance and the lack of an available whisky bottle, I didn't need to get into how such sorcery occurred. It happened.

Obviously, I've got to now download everything back from OneDrive to his C: drive. I can do that easily via remote (hopefully...).

What I'm looking for is a solution to keep him from ever being able to access OneDrive. The caveat it that Mr. jsnydcsa Snr. is one of my five "authorized users" of my Microsoft account (so that he has access to Outlook, Word, Excel, etc.). OneDrive, and it's storage, are part of this Microsoft package. I believe his device has to stay logged in to his Microsoft account for all sorts of reasons (Windows and Office updates, amoungst other things). But, I'm sure that, by virtue of being logged into the account, his computer happily tells him (ahem ... tricks him) to use his OneDrive storage. If anyone has a practical solution that is "trick-proof" to keep him away from OneDrive, I'd appreciate some tips.

Thanks. Time for a whisky.

Does he have an allowance or he can store as much as your subscription allows? Can you set a quota?
thinking of creating a folder in his drive, hidden, full of crap so that he can’t upload anything else.

How about putting a dummy / test file of 1tb on his onedrive, then his onedrive is full and he can't upload anything anymore.
https://myjob.page/tools/test-files

I have elderly parents who are easily confused, so I feel your pain.

In this case, your parents aren't to blame -- This was caused by OneDrive. Certain Windows Updates will cause OneDrive to have its settings put back to defaults. The Backup option does the behavior you mentioned, moves everything to the cloud, remaps the user's folders to OneDrive folders, deletes local copies, etc.

FIRST and foremost -- make sure you have a second copy somewhere OneDrive isn't looking before you start anything. Some people found out the hard way that once you delete OneDrive, there go all of their data they thought was stored locally.

I like Chris Titus' Windows Tool to do a lot of things. https://christitus.com/windows-tool/

Under Tweaks is Uninstall OneDrive. I like his approach because it makes sure everything has been downloaded from OneDrive before removing it.

Also under Updates, he allows you to disable updates to various degrees. The Security setting is quite a nice compromise. No new "feature" updates for a long time, and it waits 4 days for security updates, so it lets the other users be the guinea pigs.

Great ideas. Thanks.

I'm going to
1) Have him leave his laptop on overnight, connected to internet, to continue to sync between laptop and OneDrive.
2) Download everything from OneDrive via my laptop connection to his OneDrive to my computer.
3) Give the abovementioned utility a try to try and shut down OneDrive (and, as part of the process) bring his One Drive files back to his computer
4) Upload a false dummy file to his OneDrive to keep it "full" and maybe prevent him from doing this - by trickery, sorcery, accident, or otherwise - in the future.

Any other thoughts appreciated.

Will advise.

In the long-run, take a look at something called SyncThing... This little utility is cross-platform (macOS, Windows, Linux, Android, Solaris, BSD) and is the glue which holds my office's disparate networks together. I use it with some of our clients as well. ...and I also have it on my parents' computers and devices, with it configured to send one direction to my servers for backups, including versioning. When (not if) they overwrite a file they need, I can just pull an older version.

Chrome Remote Desktop and Anydesk are two other tools I find quite helpful with them as well. Granted, that requires they be signed onto the internet, which is a whole other discussion and lessons in frustration.

I haven't tried uninstalling Onedrive (so if you have a spare system you can use as a guinea pig) I'd try uninstalling it (you don't need a specialized app to do this, it is listed in the apps list). It may have some unintended consequences in conjunction with the other office apps. Another thing you can try is to disable it from loading (go into the task manager, switch to startup tab and disable Onedrive from there). It would show up in the system still, just not loaded. You would need to periodically check to confirm it's not running, but that's something I do every few months just to make sure nothing unexpected installed as well.

I don't understand why you want to do this. OneDrive is free and easy backup (if you don't have a ton of data, but cheap to just get a TB) and it is seamless. All your docs still show up in their original folders but are constantly synced with OneDrive in case something happens.

Also, Mr. jsnydcsa Snr found this, which may prove helpful



https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/...d-7cfabbf1a15a







Frustration. Tell me about it. The only thing I think would stop a hacker from getting into Mr. jsnydcsa Snr's computer via TeamViewer or Chrome Remote Desktop is the painfully difficult process of getting him to "ready" his machine on his end for me to remote it. That said, I have "disabled" even my ability to log in using TeamViewer without his direct involvement (e.g. it doesn't run on startup) and he doesn't "Log In" to Google in FFox or use Chrome. My only backup to all of this is telling him that if ANYONE other than me ever says the words TeamViewer, Chrome, Remote or Desktop to him he should just hang up the phone and call me.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by gfunkdave (Post 36334442)

I don't understand why you want to do this. OneDrive is free and easy backup (if you don't have a ton of data, but cheap to just get a TB) and it is seamless. All your docs still show up in their original folders but are constantly synced with OneDrive in case something happens.

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I appreciate the thought but for me, at least, it's the unfortunate situation of having senior citizen parents. Because Mr. jsnydcsa Snr doesn't want anything to do with "the cloud." He's fearful of it in a way that I can best describe as why my Grandparents and Great Grandparents wanted their Social Security checks to come in the mail rather than direct deposit. He doesn't do online banking. He cashes checks and carries cash. He doesn't receive e-bills and pays bills by check. He doesn't use an "app" to track his various medical self-tests at home. He writes them on a chart and faxes them to some number that no doubt translates it into data for his physician. He doesn't use online medical chart sites to download his medical record (even though it's there, in the cloud). He's pushing almost 90 y/o. I know what you know and tend to agree. But, I've been using a computer since I was 10ish and a TRS80 was amazing and bulletin boards were a great place to share information (one might say, put info in the cloud). Frankly, having been victimized at least two times before (by my count), he's fearful of it all. But, I suppose like taking away a senior citizens car. It's just something where he's unwilling to give up while claiming he can "use it" on his own terms. That's about all I can say. Is a great, free, seamless backup/remote option ... you bet. It is a great, free, seamless option for him ... nope.

I appreciate and agree with everyone's thoughts and ideas. I'll keep folks posted.

OneDrive != Backup! In the case of OneDrive, it MOVES those files out of those folders on your computer and into the "cloud". There have been multiple times where sync services like this have had issues and the user lost data.

I'm a fraud / white collar crime investigator by trade. When it comes to the cloud, I'm off-grid. The doctors and specialists I use still use paper charts. The lab I use does everything in-house with paper records. I maintain my own data center and services. I do bank online and will use credit cards, but with my job I'm also fully aware of what is being recorded in databases out there. I've worked with various agencies over the years and it's outright frightening what's available on most people. I'm regularly pruning databases of my information.

Relevant story:
https://www.neowin.net/news/windows-...ng-permission/

It keeps a local copy and syncs the folders with OneDrive. The files are still available even without a network connection. Once you reconnect it re-syncs.

I hate getting into the "is this backup" conversation. For 99% of home users it is a perfectly good backup solution. If my laptop vanishes into the ether one day, I sign into OneDrive on a new laptop and all my files reappear. If that's not backup, I don't care.

Those who accidentally delete or overwrite a file or get hit with ransomware would beg to differ.

Folks. I didn't mean to start a war over this. As you can surmise from my earlier posts, there's some X-Y axis chart of tolerance for certain things v. need for certain things v. ability to handle certain things v. perception of certain things. Even between Mr. jsnydcsa Snr and Mrs jsnydcsa Snr (married 60+ years) there's a difference of opinon about need for backup, location of backup, best methods of same. So, I appreciate the tips.

Ah that’s a good point. I always thought Onedrive had version support since I’m used to seeing it in Office but I guess not.