Locking the windows desktop

cookoid_0 · 11 Dec 2010 at 00:54

I've started work at a firm where IT have locked the windows desktop so you can't right click and send a shortcut there, or indeed save anything there, oher than by navigating to it through windows folders etc.

Never seen this before. Is there any justification for it or are they just being over controlling?

Its a real PITA as I use right click shortcut when deep in a folder tree all the time. :confused:

Mr-White · 11 Dec 2010 at 01:15

Just depends on the company and their security requirements. Your best bet is to speak to IT, as if there's one thing that ****es them off is users trying to bypass their security.

MW

cookoid_0 · 11 Dec 2010 at 04:02

Nah, I'm not going to bypass anything.

I am wondering if anyone can give me a reason why it might be a security issue. As far as I know the desktop is just another folder. If I am wrong then please let me know.

theheyes · 11 Dec 2010 at 10:53

It might not be a security issue at all. Perhaps only your My Docs folder is backed up and this is their way of encouraging people not to save stuff to their desktop for example.

m4cc45 · 11 Dec 2010 at 11:16

As per the post above.

The amount of users who think that saving on the desktop is fine and then loose stuff because of it is untrue.

Standard is to redirect the My Documents to a network drive and back this up and then to lock down the desktop so that users cant right click and do new document, etc.

It may seem like a PITA but for sys admins its a god-send. What may cause you a few seconds of inconvenience can cause the desktop engineers hours due to having to send hard-drives off for recovery.

M.

cookoid_0 · 11 Dec 2010 at 12:49

OK, but if you set it up to redirect, then

the 'right click, send to desktop' part of windows will still work yes?

Raumarik · 11 Dec 2010 at 14:13

Chances are your desktop is a standard one for the company or department you are in, they'll have group policy locking it down to prevent saving to it and your "my documents" is probably redirected onto the server. They could have done this via roaming profiles but a lot of companies don't like them. The right-click disable/desktop seems a tad over-zealous but you never know why it's been done, there might well have been someone who's desktop HDD went pop and they lost everything they'd saved. A lot of people are still quite useless with computers if it's anything more complicated than typing or browsing the net.

Send to desktop might not work - they might have your desktop read only or have it redirected to a location you have only read permissions from. Hate to say it but without talking to your IT department about it you should try to get around this.

m4cc45 · 11 Dec 2010 at 14:16

cookoid_0 said:
OK, but if you set it up to redirect, then

the 'right click, send to desktop' part of windows will still work yes?

Not if they've done it correctly. The group policy has options to disable right mouse button (as you've found) and also to write files to the desktop (this also includes shortcuts) as I've already said if you enable wirting to the desktop then it's not going to get backed up and it's going to cause the company issues. It's easier to just lock it down to a standard corporate desktop and everyone has the same.

M.

Westyfield2 · 11 Dec 2010 at 14:40

Good idea TBH.

Most IT Depts will have the network setup so your storage space mounts as a particular drive (X:\ usually) and your My Documents shortcut etc is redirected to it. Your X:\ drive is only ever on the network. If you lose your network connection you lose your X:\ drive. It's backed up with windows previous versions four times a day, and backed up to tape overnight.

Your user profile (C:\Documents & Settings) will be stored locally on your PCs C:\ drive. When you save something to the desktop, download a cookie, or whatever it happens on your PCs C:\ drive. When you log out your user profile is copied back up to the network. When you next log in to a PC it will copy the user profile off the network to the PCs C:\ drive (this is called roaming profiles).
Your user profile is not backed up. When your finding logging in or out takes ages, it's because your profile has got too big.

Despite telling users this, including it in the Wikis etc, the number of people you find who've stored stuff on their desktop is just depressing

. Found one user, who was moaning that logging in/our took ages, had a couple of Gigabytes on his desktop :rolleyes:

.

SiriusB · 11 Dec 2010 at 15:51

Westyfield2 said:
Despite telling users this, including it in the Wikis etc, the number of people you find who've stored stuff on their desktop is just depressing . Found one user, who was moaning that logging in/our took ages, had a couple of Gigabytes on his desktop .

For one client I am in the process of setting up about 20 users with new machines. Doesn't matter how much we stress not to save to the Desktop or elsewhere, almost every single user has had to martial everything back to My Documents.

I keep telling the company to let us lock down the PCs more, but office politics keeps going against me. I am "just" a consultant, so they usually choose to ignore my advice. Still, I get more money the longer I am there, so whatever!