Limiting applications to standard user

[Guest]

I am setting up a new machine that will be used in a public area. The
primary purpose of this machine is to run Media Center. I have setup two
users on the machine. The Administrator and a generic Standard use. It is
Vista Home Premium.

What I would like to do is remove all of the entries in the Start menu for
the Standard use so that they won't be tempted to run Wordpad, or Calculator
or IE. I thought that if I went in and deleted them it would only effect
this user but it removed them from the Admin user as well.

Is this possible or am I SOL?

 

[Ronnie Vernon MVP]

Bruce

Just hiding shortcuts to programs on the start menu is not enough. A user
can also use the Run command, command line interface, default shortcut keys
and other ways to start programs. When you try to limit users from running
certain programs and applications, it can turn into a can of worms.

The best solution is to use a Kiosk software program to lock the computer
down and only allow what you want to be accessed.

Here is what Kiosk software is and does:

Kiosk software - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiosk_software

To see who makes the software, just Google for kiosk software.

 

[Mark Bourne]

I am setting up a new machine that will be used in a public area. The
primary purpose of this machine is to run Media Center. I have setup two
users on the machine. The Administrator and a generic Standard use. It is
Vista Home Premium.

What I would like to do is remove all of the entries in the Start menu for
the Standard use so that they won't be tempted to run Wordpad, or Calculator
or IE. I thought that if I went in and deleted them it would only effect
this user but it removed them from the Admin user as well.

Is this possible or am I SOL?

 

[Mark Bourne]

I am setting up a new machine that will be used in a public area. The
primary purpose of this machine is to run Media Center. I have setup two
users on the machine. The Administrator and a generic Standard use. It is
Vista Home Premium.

What I would like to do is remove all of the entries in the Start menu for
the Standard use so that they won't be tempted to run Wordpad, or Calculator
or IE. I thought that if I went in and deleted them it would only effect
this user but it removed them from the Admin user as well.

Is this possible or am I SOL?

Some shortcuts are there for all users, so anything you do to them does,
as you have found, affect all users.
Shortcuts in C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\ show on the
start menu for all users
Shortcuts in C:\Users\<UserName>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start
Menu\ show only on the start menu for the given UserName

So, to do what you ask (which I'm not sure is entirely what you want),
you need to move the shortcuts from
C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\ to
C:\Users\<AdminUserName>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\
so that they are still there for AdminUserName, then delete any other
shortcuts you don't want from
C:\Users\<RestrictedUserName>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\

As Ronnie pointed out, there are many other ways of launching programs,
and there is software around to make your task easier.

Mark.

(Apologies for the blank post - I accidentally hit the send button
before typing anything!)