Group policy queries. Newbie alert!

Ratbag · 27 Sep 2009 at 20:15

My last post was about locking down a PC configuration for student use. I'm still wrestling with this problem, thanks in part to the horrors of gpedit.

So I'm the admin, and I think it'd be good to 'disable the notification area' etc etc. I reboot and sure enough, all the changes are applied on the admin account but not neccasarily on the standard user account. Some are, some aren't.

Basically, I want the swines to be able to access Firefox [default internet browser] off the start menu and absolutely nothing else. No right clicks on the taskbar or start menu, no access to tray items or the control panel etc. How hard can it be?

Any advice?

theheyes · 27 Sep 2009 at 21:20

Do you know about Windows Steady State?

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/sharedaccess/default.mspx

It's basically a front end for editing GPOs but might be a little more friendly for newbies.

marc2003 · 27 Sep 2009 at 21:20

you shouldn't be messing about with group policies unless it's a pc hooked onto a domain where you can set it on individual users/groups.

for a standalone machine, try windows steadystate.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/sharedaccess/default.mspx

Burnsy2023 · 28 Sep 2009 at 10:55

Just to echo the two above posts, SteadyState is exactly what you want

jas72 · 28 Sep 2009 at 13:34

was thinking about this for my son but...

General
Can I install Windows® SteadyState™ on a 64-bit computer?

Windows SteadyState is designed to work on 32-bit computers only.

still might keep XP 32 as dual boot for the boy.

Guest2 · 28 Sep 2009 at 14:04

Again, SteadyState or maybe Deep Freeze?

Burnsy2023 · 28 Sep 2009 at 14:07

Is there a free version of Deep Freeze?

Guest2 · 28 Sep 2009 at 14:17

Burnsy2023 said:
Is there a free version of Deep Freeze?

Dont think so, but i could be wrong. Did the OP want free software/free methods?

Ratbag · 28 Sep 2009 at 20:23

I thought about deepfreeze a while back and downloaded the evaluation but got an error message on installation: 'deepfreeze doesn't support disks over 2TB', which is odd as my boot drive is 37GB and the other drive is 1TB. Doesn't instill a lot of confidence....

Anyway, after much arsing about I ran gpedit [as administrator] direct from the system32 folder of the standard user and applied the settings I need. Now all the settings remain - I couldn't figure why some changes only affected the admin acccount and some were universal.

I got hold of an app called anti-executable that creates a whitelist of allowed programs and denies the execution of all others. The swine have access to Firefox, and only firefox. Combined with drive access denial, the might of admuncher and Opendns - I think we should be OK.

Cheers for the replies!

Burnsy2023 · 28 Sep 2009 at 21:29

Did you try SteadyState?