Prevent deletion of Desktop Icons

[Guest]

I have tried to no avail to find a policy to prevent our users from deleting
a desktop icon. I have even tried enabling the following policy: User
Configuration-Administrative Templates-Desktop-Don't save settings at exit,
in the hope that if they did delete an icon it would come back on reboot - no
luck.

Does anyone know of a method for doing this? Any information is greatly
appreciated!!

 

[Gautam Anand]

1. One option to give these users Mandatory profiles. So no matter
what changes they make to the profile everything gets reset to
defaults and next logon. Additionally for their data you could provide
these guys with Home Folders. So if this is possible you make a) no
changes to desktop saved like deleting Icons b)make backing up and
restoring user data a much lesser headache. Im going to think up of
more solutions to this as well.

Good luck till then

--
Gautam Anand
e: gautam at hotpop dot com
---------------------------------
|I have tried to no avail to find a policy to prevent our users from
deleting
| a desktop icon. I have even tried enabling the following policy:
User
| Configuration-Administrative Templates-Desktop-Don't save settings
at exit,
| in the hope that if they did delete an icon it would come back on
reboot - no
| luck.
|
| Does anyone know of a method for doing this? Any information is
greatly
| appreciated!!

 

[Guest]

I see what you are saying as far as Mandatory profiles being a good solution,
but is is possible to create a Mandatory profile at the local level? I've
only had experience with them in roaming profiles. Also, for the most part,
our users desktops are widely varied and I'm not sure how I would support
that under the Mandatory profile structure. As far as their data, our users
have a networked drive for storage of this, so that's not a problem (either
from a backup or a restore point of view).

Thanks!!

 

[Ken B]

You could also (probably--I've never tested this) change the NTFS
permissions on the desktop folder within a problematic user's profile to
Read Only... provided you're using NTFS on the drive their profile folders
are located

Ken

 

[Gautam Anand]

NTFS perms could get pretty messy to play around with. Specially on
multiple boxes.

What exactly do you have in mind when you don't want the users to
change the desktop icons.

Do they need those icons to be there?
Why don't you want them to del the desktop icons? If you just want the
icons to be there, then you could write a lil batch file which you can
use as a logon script. This batch file copies certain shortcuts from a
central location and dump them on the users desktop when he logs in.
hardly an entp solution but it should be effective. You could need to
test it out.
You could do something like a

---------------------------------------------------
rem this file copies desktop shortcuts to the users desktop.
copy \\servername\sharename\*.lnk %userprofile%\desktop /y
---------------------------------------------------

Also, if these icons are reqd to be used by the user, then place them
in the startmenu of the All Users Container. So that way,they always
show up and the users don't have the access to delete these things.

But seriously, what are you trying to achieve with these steps.


--
Gautam Anand
e: gautam at hotpop dot com
---------------------------------
| You could also (probably--I've never tested this) change the NTFS
| permissions on the desktop folder within a problematic user's
profile to
| Read Only... provided you're using NTFS on the drive their profile
folders
| are located
|
| Ken
|
|
| | > 1. One option to give these users Mandatory profiles. So no matter
| > what changes they make to the profile everything gets reset to
| > defaults and next logon. Additionally for their data you could
provide
| > these guys with Home Folders. So if this is possible you make a)
no
| > changes to desktop saved like deleting Icons b)make backing up and
| > restoring user data a much lesser headache. Im going to think up
of
| > more solutions to this as well.
| >
| > Good luck till then
| >
| > --
| > Gautam Anand
| > e: gautam at hotpop dot com
| > ---------------------------------
| > | > |I have tried to no avail to find a policy to prevent our users
from
| > deleting
| > | a desktop icon. I have even tried enabling the following
policy:
| > User
| > | Configuration-Administrative Templates-Desktop-Don't save
settings
| > at exit,
| > | in the hope that if they did delete an icon it would come back
on
| > reboot - no
| > | luck.
| > |
| > | Does anyone know of a method for doing this? Any information is
| > greatly
| > | appreciated!!
| >
| >
|
|

 

[Guest]

The basic goal is that once their desktop is set up we don't want them to be
able to delete their icons. While this is not a big deal if it hits the
recycle bin, we've had instances where that has not occured and we then have
to figure out where it was pointing (if it's a non-standard program). We
have a small IT staff and are trying to "tie down" some of the things that
are not a big deal, technically, but are a pain in the neck when we have more
important things that need to be attended to.

 

[taranis]

You can rename ntuser.dat to ntuser.man this will reset the desktop
after they log off. Is this what you had in mind?