Solved Prevent changing of wallpaper etc for specific account

[RaviR]

Hey Guys,


I know you can disable software installation/changing of wallpapers for users via gpo. My question is, is there a way i can disable these settings for just one account alone? There are 2 local accounts, 1 teacher and 1 student. I want to be able to have the teacher account be free to do what ever but have the student account locked down. Is this possible or would it only be able to be done if the computer is on a domain?


Regards.

 

[Brink]

Hello Ravi,

Yes, you should be able to use the specific users or groups option from step 1 in OPTION ONE of the tutorial below to prevent the student's account or group from being able to.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/62048-desktop-background-specify-prevent-change.html

Hope this helps,
Shawn

 

[RaviR]

Hey Shawn,

Thank you very much for that link it works perfectly! Just a couple questions i have please.

1) Do i have to do these steps for each computer or can i copy that msc file and run it?

2) The restrictions are working and the student account does not have access to change the background. The warnings that pop up 'This operation has been cancelled due to restrictions in effect on this computer' is expected but, after that a 'Explorer.EXE Unspecified error' comes up. Is that normal or can i have that error removed.

Thank you for the help =)

 

[Brink]

Q1) I'm not sure how to deploy it like that, so it would be best to repeat per computer if you don't have to many.

Q2) I haven't seen the 'Explorer.EXE Unspecified error' before with using the tutorial. That error indicates that the Personalization Control Panel item is not available. Did you also remove "Personalization" icon from the Control Panel? If so, that would give you this error whenever Personalize is clicked on from the desktop context menu.

Here's more on that error: Windows7 Explorer.exe generates "Unspecified error" when trying to access "Personalize" in display properties

 

[RaviR]

Hmm well its more than 30 computers lol. Is there a way to maybe export and import the policies so i can create the msc file and just import the policies i have configured?

I fixed the error, what i did was, based on your link, gone to 'show only specified control panel items' and added 'Microsoft.Action Center' to the list of allowed items. Error is gone now and the user cant access the personalization or anything else yay!

 

[Brink]

Great news so far.

I'm afraid that I don't have any experience with deploying policies like that to other systems. However, if you set the policy to only apply to "Non-Administrators" group (step 6), then you should be able to copy the .msc file to another computer and open it to apply it to that computer as well. It's only when you select a specific user(s) instead of a group is when you just can't do this.

You might try running the .msc file on one of the other computers as test to see. If it works, then you could just repeat on the other computers. If not, then no harm is done, but you may need to start from scratch to set the policy on each PC.

 

[RaviR]

Thank you very much for the help =)

 

[Brink]

You're most welcome Ravi.