XP Start button or Taskbar Removal

[skybolt_1]

Hey everyone,

This is a question for all of the group policy gurus out there. At the hospital I work at, we are about to deploy 300 new machines which will be placed in patient rooms for quick access to our Meditech system. We want these machines locked up TIGHT since they are going to be in mostly unsecured/unmonitored public areas.

Currently, our game plan consists of using group policy to remove just about everything there is to remove from the start menu and leaving it as such. BUT, I was wondering if there was a way to remove the entire menu, and perhaps the taskbar while we are at it.

Is there a way in group policy or otherwise to remove either the Start menu or taskbar or both for a single user account?

Thanks!

[Martoch]

See if this works...I've looked for a way to totally disable the start menu in gpedit in the past as well, I can't believe there isn't an option to disable it there.

[skybolt_1]

Thanks Martoch - I'll run downstairs and see if it works on our test system.

Meanwhile - anyone else?

[skybolt_1]

Hey Martoch,

OK it worked great... The only things we noticed are that it is still possible for the user to right-click on the start menu button and bring up the right-click menu, and it seems to be applied to the entire computer. I am not surprised by this second part, since it is a registry modification, but have you ever come across the right-click issue?

Thanks a ton!

[skybolt_1]

Hey guys,

OK, well we tried out that hack on several machines, it worked fine, or so it seemed. Now, no matter what we do, it doesn't seem like registry changes that we apply under the Administrator account don't seem to affect the guest account - aka, the start button still works.

What could this be?

[large_nostril]

I don't know of any programs or tweaks off hand that'll do what you want but I can write a small app in C++ for you that can do the following:
Hide desktop content (icons, etc)
Hide start button
Hide taskbar
Disable Ctrl+Alt+Del/Ctrl+Shift+Esc
Disable Alt+Tab/Alt+Esc
Disable Task Manager

I'll just need to know what features you want and what operating systems it'll be used on.

Then all you'll need to do is put the EXE somewhere, add a startup registry entry (or set it as a service), and use this tweak to disable the Windows hotkey.

[tonypascal]

I was wondering if you finnaly wrote the little application you were talking about, I am also very interrested...