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by dragonsyre

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I am trying to set up a couple of computers so that the people using them only have access to the icon's on the screen. I don't want them to be able to access the start menu or the right click menu's unless the administrator loggs on. And I want it to force anyone who uses the old cancel button to get logged in as admin to go to the user account and not the admin account. I am using Window's XP and was wondering if anyone out there had some knowledge in this area and would be willing to share some tips. Thanks.

5 replies

by notsochiguy

...if they are, I'd recommend using a machine specific policy.

Assuming that they are stand alone PCs, you can still use the old tool, Poledit, to work with this.

Log on as the sysadmin, and get that profile created the way you like it.

Then, create another admin level account on the PC. Use this account to strip out all the things you don't want the user to have access to (you can use POLEDIT to disable such items as registry editing, what runs at startup, etc).

Then, log off, and log back in as the sysadmin account. Remove admin rights from the other account/disable it. Then, copy the user profile from that account into the DEFAULT USERS directory under c:\documents and settings.

That should just about do it.

I've used this method to lockdown users on a few stand-alone terminal servers.

by statykserver

I think gpedit.msc actually replaces the old windows 98 poledit tool and is installed by default. But if you want to try it here is how to install poledit
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/winxppro/reskit/c05621675.mspx

To run the group policy editor
click on start then run and type gpedit.msc

You should do this under the current users profile and there are plenty of lockdown features in this configuration utility.

Also I don't think the old cancel button to get to the admin account will work on XP as long as you have set up a password for the admin account and create a user account, preferably a limited account.

by tony hopkinson

used to produce a tool called desktop lock. It was for industrial PCs, so you logged in as fred you could only run predefined applications. We made quite a bit of use of it so only a particular suite of in house programs could be run.
Been away from that are for a while, but it was so useful in industry I'd be surprised if they hadn't kept it going.

Much simpler than poledit, etc as worked it worked on everything denied except what you configured as runnable.

by dragonsyre

Thanks for the information. I found a microsoft program called Shared Computer Toolkit that allows you to limit the computer so that they have next to no access except what you want them to have. It is an easy to install and run program and have found it to do everything poledit could do with an easier setup ability.

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