group/user policy for unruly kids

[Raymond RUSSELL]

Hello all

I let my kids (two girls) and their many friends
play about on an old P-II with Win2k installed.

As computer users they are all extremely intuitive
(friendly way of describing it).

They rename or delete programs via WinExplorer,
move or delete entries in the start menu,
change program settings they should really leave alone,
make numerous invalid shortcuts,
decorate the desktop in horrible patterns and colors,
and no doubt leave hundreds of chaotic and invalid registry keys in their
wake.

And then they're surprised when some of their favorite
office programs and games etc won't work.

And it's too much for me to reinstall Win2K
and all their programs every couple of weeks.

What is the best way for me (until they get a bit older)
to keep their meddling little fingers out of the works ?

I've tried making the kids "standard users"
but for some reason when they log on
this brings them to a virgin desktop with no programs.
I'd like just one desktop only - both for me (admin) and them (users).

Can I use some sort of "group policy"
to fix things so that - no matter what they do
- decorating the desktop, fiddling with the menus -
the next bootup restores
the desktop, the menus, the programs, and all the settings
to the perfect, tidy order I usually leave them ?

Nice step-by-step instructions please !

Thanks in advance, from Ray

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

Get an imaging program such as Acronis Partition
Expert and create a snapshot of your installation.
Once every week you re-apply this snapshot. To
do so will take less than five minutes of your time
each time (even though the whole process might
take 30 minutes).

 

[Rick]

No offense but that's likely a terrible idea in this case. All documents
and other data that were created (as well as application settings) for
ALL users on the machine would be overwritten when the image
backup is restored.

It's better to create a separate group for your kids and liberally apply
group policy restrictions for these users.

Start/Run/gpedit.msc

Rick

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

I forgot to mentione that the idea is based on the standard configuration
I apply to all my PCs:

- Operating system & Programs on drive C:
- Data & image files on drive D:

Using this approach, the data is preserved during the imaging
operation.

 

[Jisha]

While I think Pegasus has the right answer (as usual!), I have a different
approach.

Teach _them_ how to do a clean install & make 'em do it 3 or 4 times...

After THAT, when you whip out the nifty system image, Dad will be everyone's
hero and they'll all have learned the limits and consequences of their
"explorations".

Chris

 

[BS]

All-

Check out Deep Freeze:

http://www.deepfreeze.net/index.asp?pg=support

It will keep your settings. It will allow changes to be made, but upon
reboot, the system will revert back to your settings again.

Make them store their data in a folder or on a drive not protected by Deep
Freeze....