Help: How do I disable Help and Support through Group Policy or push?????

  • Thread starter Thread starter juniopp101
  • Start date Start date
J

juniopp101

I am attempting to disable Help and Support on a particular login name.
The student login is limited to pretty much everything except the one
program they should be running. I've been able to disable most
shortcut keys on all the machines through GP except for the F1 key.
When they press that they can access the Help and Support menu and fool
around there.

Is there a way to disable this through Group Policy? If not GP then is
there a way to push this over the network in Active Directory but only
affect the student login?

Thank you for your time,
Kip
 
Microsoft Shared Computer Toolkit for Windows XP
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...56-e3da-42ea-857d-92b716077a84&displaylang=en

--
Carey Frisch
Microsoft MVP
Windows - Shell/User
Microsoft Community Newsgroups
news://msnews.microsoft.com/

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

:

| I am attempting to disable Help and Support on a particular login name.
| The student login is limited to pretty much everything except the one
| program they should be running. I've been able to disable most
| shortcut keys on all the machines through GP except for the F1 key.
| When they press that they can access the Help and Support menu and fool
| around there.
|
| Is there a way to disable this through Group Policy? If not GP then is
| there a way to push this over the network in Active Directory but only
| affect the student login?
|
| Thank you for your time,
| Kip
 
I am attempting to disable Help and Support on a particular login name.
The student login is limited to pretty much everything except the one
program they should be running. I've been able to disable most
shortcut keys on all the machines through GP except for the F1 key.
When they press that they can access the Help and Support menu and fool
around there.

Is there a way to disable this through Group Policy? If not GP then is
there a way to push this over the network in Active Directory but only
affect the student login?

Thank you for your time,
Kip
Click to expand...

Help and Support is administered and run through the svchost.exe file, and
you should not set policy on that file or the user won't be able to log in.
I haven't found a way to turn it off for one user, but you can shut the
service down altogether. My question is: if they are not an administrator
and you have a strong password for the main administrator account, why do
you need to shut down Help and Support?

Help and Support is not network based, it is a local service and needs to be
disabled on each and every machine you don't want it functioning on. To do
this, go to Start > Run, and in the box, type "services.msc" without the
quotes and click OK. Then a list of services will pop up. Scroll down until
you see Help and Support and double click on it. Then, you'll see a pull
down list that says Automatic. Use the pull down list to select disabled,
then click on the Stop button and then click Apply and OK. You have just
disabled Help and Support for that machine.
 
I will defer to the MVP. :p
Help and Support is administered and run through the svchost.exe file, and
you should not set policy on that file or the user won't be able to log
in. I haven't found a way to turn it off for one user, but you can shut
the service down altogether. My question is: if they are not an
administrator and you have a strong password for the main administrator
account, why do you need to shut down Help and Support?

Help and Support is not network based, it is a local service and needs to
be disabled on each and every machine you don't want it functioning on. To
do this, go to Start > Run, and in the box, type "services.msc" without
the quotes and click OK. Then a list of services will pop up. Scroll down
until you see Help and Support and double click on it. Then, you'll see a
pull down list that says Automatic. Use the pull down list to select
disabled, then click on the Stop button and then click Apply and OK. You
have just disabled Help and Support for that machine.
Click to expand...
 
There are too many ways to cicumvent a system through help and support.
I was hoping to simply disable the F1 key as that is the only way to
access it right now. I also wanted to avoid going to each and every
single machine and do this as there are about 600 machines to do. For
instance if you navigate through help and support to the newsgroup
section you can activate internet explorer and surf the net. Or you
could look into the network diag, and find out IP addresses and such.

These schools are where all the juveniles go, so they TRY to find ways
to break down the system. It would be great if I could prevent access
to everything but the one program they have to use will not work then.
So I couldn't for instance stop windows from retrieving a F1 command
because the program needs it too.

I did not think to go into services to disable help and support, thanks
for pointing that out. Curious if there is a way to set up a script to
achieve the result you stated. If not... I'll be doing this for a long
long time. sigh...

Thank you for your reply.
 
There are too many ways to cicumvent a system through help and support.
I was hoping to simply disable the F1 key as that is the only way to
access it right now. I also wanted to avoid going to each and every
single machine and do this as there are about 600 machines to do. For
instance if you navigate through help and support to the newsgroup
section you can activate internet explorer and surf the net. Or you
could look into the network diag, and find out IP addresses and such.

These schools are where all the juveniles go, so they TRY to find ways
to break down the system. It would be great if I could prevent access
to everything but the one program they have to use will not work then.
So I couldn't for instance stop windows from retrieving a F1 command
because the program needs it too.

I did not think to go into services to disable help and support, thanks
for pointing that out. Curious if there is a way to set up a script to
achieve the result you stated. If not... I'll be doing this for a long
long time. sigh...

Thank you for your reply.
Click to expand...

You're welcome. I'm sure a script can be written for disabling the Help and
Support service. I must warn you though, if you have SP1, Help and Support
may reenable when they open it, but SP2 will let them know the service has
been disabled.
 
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