Group policy for kiosk

[Bryan]

I have a workstation that will be used as a Kiosk. Customers will use this
system to browse a manufacturers web-site. I want to lock the UI down as
much as possible so that the customer can't do anything but browse on the
Internet. If I used the group policy editor to modify the local computer,
is there a way that I can quickly get full access back if I need to manage
the computer?

Or in other words, can I designate settings to local users, if I don't have
the computer connected to a windows server with Active Directory?

Thanks for any advice on this.
Bryan

 

[Doug Knox MS-MVP]

See www.dougknox.com, Win XP Utilities, Windows XP Security Console. This utility will allow you apply a large number of Group Policy settings on a per-user basis in a non-domain environment.

Additionally, see:

http://support.microsoft.com/?id=293655
How to apply local policies to all users except administrators in a workgroup setting in Windows 2000

Applies to XP, as well.

Additionally while log on to the user account you want to restrict, Click Start, Run and enter REGEDIT Go to:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon

Right click in a blank area of the right pane and select New, String value and name the new value Shell. Double click the value you just created and enter:

"C\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe" -K

This will make Internet Explorer, in Kiosk mode the shell for that user. You would likely need to enable Remote Desktop in order to make changes, or you would have to reboot the machine so you could log on with a different account.