Cant stop control panel from expanding in start menue.

[jgrams]

Hi all – I’ve run into an issue that is more of an annoyance than a problem where that the users are not able to change the “Expand Control Panel” settings in the start menu.

We are running XP-SP3 machines, using Sysprep to reseal, and Ghost to image the machines. I create the user environment under a “test” account with the Admin user rights then copy the setting to the “Default User” profile under System Properties, Advanced, User Profiles. I reseal the image, then use Ghost to image the workstations. If I log on as myself (A Domain Admin), I’m able to change the setting and it sticks. When setting up a user, I change the settings to NOT “Expand the Control Panel”, NOT “Expand Printers”, Not “Expand Network Connections”. When I log off/on as the user, everything reverts back to being expanded.

I’ve tried giving the users Admin rights on the machine, giving the user full access to the NTUSER.DAT file, hard setting the reg keys -HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced]
"CascadeControlPanel"="NO"

All with the same results – The control panel, network connections and printers always goes back to being expanded.

Please let me know if anyone has a fix for this issue.

 

[linney]

If you really want to dive in and get dirty you could take a snapshot of your registry before making the change and another one afterward and see if you can pick up any changes. This small freeware program may help you achieve this.

RegShot

http://www.softpedia.com/get/Tweak/Registry-Tweak/Reg-Shot.shtml

Once you confirm which KEYS? (if any) change with your setting then you can explore further and look at any access permissions on all relevant keys.

Just a thought, maybe those links on the Start Menu are a bit special, and as they don't appear in the All Users/ Programs/ Start Menu, maybe they are not controlled via the Registry either?

Another thing that I might investigate is the Desktop.ini in All Users/ Programs/ Start Menu, but I haven't any further ideas on that other than comparing the contents of it with a properly working machine.

You can look at this too, but if you use it then it may alter any Group Policy settings that are in place.

How do I restore security settings to the default settings?

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/313222/#appliesto