Disable ability to connect to WiFi 1

[disturbedone]

We have ~800 XPSP3 machines in a 2K3 domain. General users have Group Policies applied that disable many things - the ability to get to Control Panel, get to the Network Connections folder etc etc. But in the taskbar is the WiFi icon to which the laptop is connected and the users can click that and connect to another SSID. Also in the taskbar is an icon for the wired LAN connection but they are disabled from doing anything with this.

How can I stop, preferably via GPO, users from being able to do anything with WiFi? I've looked through many settings in GPO but it only appears to deal with wired.

Any ideas?

 

[BadBigBen]

see if this is of any help:

Restrict users to only one wireless SSID

http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/ThinkVa...t-users-to-only-one-wireless-SSID/td-p/103271

Ben
"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."
How to ask a question, when posting them to a professional forum.
Only ask questions with yes/no answers if you want "yes" or "no"

 

[disturbedone]

Kind of but not really. It talks about an .adm that I already have and it allows me to configure the order of preferred WiFi networks (SSIDs) but there's no way to stop them from connecting to anything else.

 

[JockMullin]

This technet discussion gives several approaches to turning off radio when lan connected. I have never tried any of them as no WiFi here, but might be useful:

http://social.technet.microsoft.com...P/thread/999d0b06-b4f8-4fa5-961f-e5a609a74f18

Jock

 

[disturbedone]

Not really what I'm after. I've seen a few forums like that and it's talking about turning off wireless when you plug a wired connection in. My situation is they never plug a wired connection in.

Even with that wireless/wired situation it would still allow the user to add as many SSIDs as they like. It is not addressing that issue. Yes, if they plug a wired connection in the wireless would have no effect no matter what they added but in my situation it is purely wireless.

Is strikes me as strange that there are many ways to restrict wired but none for wireless.

 

[strongm]

Unfortunately XP does not have very good fine grain control of Wifi connections, unlike Vista/W2K8/W7

 

[disturbedone]

Did some more Googling and found

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb727029.aspx

With our current W2K3/XPSP3 setup it doesn't look like it's possible to control which SSIDs clients can connect to. But with a W2K8 domain it can be (an allow/deny list). Or we could extend the schema on the W2K3 domain to bring in the same ability.

Given that we're moving to W2K8/W7 in the not too distant future it's probably best to wait until then. No point in messing with the schema just for a few months.