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Disable user from saving on the desktop?

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by michael.ha

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Hi,

Does anyone know how to configure the Group Policy to disable user from permanently saving items on their desktop? Thanks.

Michael
Tokyo, Japan

8 replies

by ewgny

As far as I know it cannot be done via group policy. But what I have done to prevent this on some public boxes, is to remove write permissions on the users profile's desktop folder. (I also remove write permissions from the start folder as well)

by ewgny

If you are using roaming profiles, you can give the user a mandatory roaming profile. Any changes to the desktop will be lost when the log out

by ewgny

With over 300 pc's I would say go the mandatory roaming profile route. The added advantage to the mandatory profile is that the size of the users profile would be kept to a minimum, reducing network traffic. You can use group policy to redirect the My Documents folder and application data if needed, so a users files are available at any PC

by michael.ha

Thank you very for your help. I have thought about it, but I have over 300PCs. If I have to do it one by one then it would take a lot of time.

by beermonster

Hi,
The simplest way will be to create a desktop folder on each machine (via a script you can do that in a few minutes), set security on that folder to read only for all users (this can be done via the group policy computer config \ windows settings \ security \ file system). Then use folder redirection (user config \ windows settings \ folder redirection) to redirect everyones desktop to tour new folder. Hope this helps...

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