Hide the Task bar from those pesky workers...

[DerickD]

Thanks for taking the time to read this, I could realy do with some help.

I have discovered that giving the Standard users access to the task bar causes more trouble that good. So I have made a user Profile that has all the Users need, neatly placed on the Desktop.

But the big question is how do I hide that task bar from within the user profile / User policy..

Once we have got this sorted out, there will be no more work for us to do here and we can all go home....

Best regards to all,
Derick.

 

[wolluf]

Derick - when you say hide the taskbar, do you mean the quick launch toolbar?
You can't (as far as I know) remove the whole taskbar from the desktop without changing the shell program you run (ie, don't run explorer.exe). You can also disable/remove most things available from start menu, if that's the problem.

 

[DerickD]

Wolluf,

Thanks for the quick reply...!!

What we want is a completely empty desktop with only a few shortcuts to apps and folders. I thought this could be done with userpolicy's/roaming profiles, but I can't find it anymore.

Derick

 

[wolluf]

Derick,

As I said - don't think with explorer running shell that you can actually remove task bar - its part of the desktop (somebody may prove me wrong here!).
But I think you can disable everything available from start button (except programs - and you just have to remove all shortcuts to do that), and stop right clicking on taskbar with policies and mandatory profile.

 

[johncurtis]

Hi
It would be useful to know why access to the taskbar is causing you problems. I also don't think that you can get rid of it completely. You probably wouldn't want to do this anyway. I can imagine an endless stream of helpdesk calls from people asking where their minimised programs have gone!

You can disable the start button but this also has usability issues.

What's the problem you're having?

John

 

[DerickD]

Hi johncurtis,

Your point about the minimized programs is a good one

Our major problem is most of our users are like kids, messing with the system every chance they get. For instance there's a Matrox icon on the right of the taskbar, which allows users to tamper with the display settings even though we restricted this with policys. And I would also like to remove access to Control Panel and Help in Start Menu.

thanks..

 

[ExNuMex]

I am working on something similaron Windows XP machines. You can disable the Control Panel and Help Menu and pretty much everything else through the registry. Most of the settings would need to be set under the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE hive. The website

http://www.winguides.com

has good information on changing the settings in the registry to disable or enable the items you want.

Good Luck