Windows 7: Guest account questions

I sometimes have family members that need to use my computer. I do not want them accessing my programs or documents on my PC so i figured i would turn on the guest account. The only thing is... I'm logged into the guest account and all of my installed programs are showing up on the start menu. When i let people use my computer i only want them to access certain programs and features that i have installed on my computer... such as Internet, Microsoft office... and - Well that's really it. I also do not want anyone installing any software to the pc. Wich way would be the most efficient way to set up the account this way? thanks in advance

This partly has to do with how those programs were installed in the first place. Some programs have installation options to determine who has access to the program. I'm not familiar enough with it to give you detailed instructions, but you may find some ways to tailor the guest account's ability to access programs and functions with gpedit.msc.

Welcome

I would try this. Give permission to only yourself.

How to Take Ownership and Grant Permissions in Windows Vista My Digital Life
Same for Windows 7

Another approach that might help you is to delete the shortcuts of programs that you don't want other folks to see from the Public Desktop folder. To view these, open a Windows Explorer window, then click Organize, Folder and Search Options, click the View tab, then Show hidden files, folders, and drives. Click Ok.

Then navigate to Users, Public, Public Desktop.

You should see shortcuts for the programs you don't want to share in this folder. You can simply delete them, but I would recommend you copy and paste to a safe place (any folder) so you can ensure that you're not deleting them from your own desktop at the same time. If they do disappear from your own desktop, simply paste them to your desktop directly from the safe place.

Cheers!
Greg