Limiting an account

  • Thread starter Thread starter Jamie Allison
  • Start date Start date
J

Jamie Allison

Hi There,

I have a fair bit of knowledge in windows XP and a little bit about group
policy editor and the registry.

My problem is that i have set up an account called music on windows xp
professional and would like to limit this account as much as possible.

I know how to give the account the ability to access certain folders etc but
what i would like is to change the start menu but for only this account.
What i would like is for everything to be taken off the start menu apart
from log off and shutdown.

I would also like to disable the right click on the start menu to dissallow
them from opening an explorer window etc.

I would also like to stop them from right clicking on the desktop.

Basically all i want this account to do is run winamp. I have managed to
set the privaleges correct on winamp to allow them to run it and also the
music is all situated on d:\ so i have given them full read access to this
drive.

I tried to acheive this by going into gpedit.msc and restricting the start
menu. I almost got the desired affect apart form when i logged on as other
users it had also applied to the other users.

I only want to apply these setting to this music account and no other
accounts.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance

Jamie
 
Thank you, i assumed that would be the case.

So does this mean that i have to give the account in question admin rights
so i can edit the registry in it and then go to change the keys i want.
Then take admin rights back off it so the user can't edit the registry?

Also does anyone now know what registry keys i would need to change/add to
remove some items from the start menu.

Thanks again

Jamie
 
As far as I'm concerned the whole means of limiting users is archaic. An
admin should be able to access and then load "settings/policies/whatever"
for each and every account, changing what they want on an individual basis
rather than the BS of limiting specific account types.

When I first got XP I thought "you've got to be kidding, this is by design"
when found I couldn't really "tailor" my kids accounts individually and
differently. Because of this, I simply set up my XP pc with an automatic
login with an admin account and instead told the kids to stay off my 98SE
pc. My thoughts are "screw it" let XP screw up, it's easier to just
re-install if/when required. I keep my 98SE pc for anything "important" as
it all works and as expected, reliably.

Now that said, it's my impression that to individually tailor user accounts,
one must first change the user to an admin, then login as that user, change
what you want, logout and then reassign account as a user. Now what kind of
half arsed clumsy design is that!!!
 
Ok i am getting there now.

I have given the account admin rights and changed the registry setting so
everything is off the start menu. The only one i can't seem to find the
value for is removing the settings menu from there.

Does anyone know this key?

Also i would like to then disable right clicking on the start menu or task
bar. Any ideas.

Thanks in advance.

Regards
 
Hello Jamie.

Jamie Allison said:
Ok i am getting there now.

I have given the account admin rights and changed the registry setting so

everything is off the start menu. The only one i can't seem to find the

value for is removing the settings menu from there.

Does anyone know this key?

Also i would like to then disable right clicking on the start menu or task

bar. Any ideas.

Thanks in advance.

Regards
Click to expand...

Try this:
->Start ->Run ->gpedit.msc

This loads the group policy editor. Then navigate to:

->User Configuration ->Start Menu and Taskbar

Find the policy titled 'Remove access to the context menus for the
taskbar'. Enable this from the properties for the policy.

You can probably also use the 'Prevent changes to Taskbar and Start Menu
Settings' by enabling that.

Graham.
 
Doesn't this remove it for all users though? I only want to do it for one
user.

Regards
 
Back
Top