(sorry, last message was accidentally sent before completing)
Hi Klaus. One way to do this is to give the local admins group read-only
access to the following registry keys:
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\ComputerName]
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\ComputerName\ComputerNa
me]
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\ComputerName\ActiveComp
uterName
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters]
Please note that this is not tested or supported by Microsoft (I am not sure
if it will cause any problems on the client machines....please test before
doing this).
Also, a local administrator could go into the registry and change the
permissions on these keys back to full control if they want. There is
really no way to prevent local administrators from doing anything on the
machine. Generally, if a user needs to be restricted in any way, they
should not be a local admin.