USER PROFILES (XP-PRO SP2)

Topic

New Reply

I have tried to access this information without success, obviously I am composing the question incorrectly. My needs are to create user profiles with very limited access to programs, and certainly only the bare necessaries in the startup (System Tray and wherever). My understanding this would mean moving the program links from the “All Users” profile to individual users.

In other words “All Programs” entries would populate from specific users rather than from “All Users” I am happy to move links in Explorer or purchase a program which lists all installed programs and select those to which each user can access or purchase a good book that explains how to achieve my objective.

An example, if I wanted a user to only have access “Microsoft Word” and not “Microsoft Access” how is this achieved?

Reply | Quote

Replies

You can configure this using Software Restriction Policies. This is not easy to do and if you get it wrong you may end up with no access to your computer at all, so be very very careful – and make a full image backup before you start playing.

StuartR

Reply | Quote

My understanding this would mean moving the program links from the “All Users” profile to individual users.

Sorry, you are wrong. Usual routine is to create a new group and assign individual profiles to this group only.
Local Users and Groups overview
How To Use the Group Policy Editor to Manage Local Computer Policy in Windows XP.
Then you can restict specific drives, folders or files (programs) to be accessed for this group members.
How to Share and Set Permissions for Folders and Files Using Windows XP

But if you want to assign restrictions to one (or two) particular profiles, you can use, for example, Doug’s Windows XP Security Console 1.4.3. According to its description,
“When you’re outside of a domain environment, XP has some features missing. XP Home leaves you completely without the Group Policy Editor, while XP Pro lacks the ability to use the Group Policy Editor to selectively apply policies to specific users. Doug’s Windows XP Security Console allows you to assign various restrictions to specific users, whether you’re running XP Pro or XP Home.”

Some books about Windows XP managing

Reply | Quote

Thank you both for your detailed replies, for an old 70 bloke they sound daunting, I have however found this article
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_…8/ai_n14912104/%5B/url%5D which seems to be more what I am trying to achieve. May I impose upon you to review the article and give me an opinion. The article is on the page of the link but down the bottom of the page.

I thank you in anticipation of your response, if you think I am silly for trying to achieve this objective please advise.

Again my most sincere appreciation.

Ted

Reply | Quote

That article seems a little confused to me, it starts off talking about All Users Startup items but then goes on to talk about the registry Run key, which is a different thing altogether.

If you just want to edit the various start menus, so that programmes only appear on the start menu for some users, then right click the start button and choose “Explore all users”. You can then move and copy the various startup program items from Documents and SettingsAll UsersStart MenuPrograms to the Start MenuPrograms folders of particular users.

PLEASE NOTE: removing an entry from this menu won’t stop a user from running the program. For example I could run Word as Start > Run > Winword

StuartR

Reply | Quote

Thank you Stuart,
I should have been more specific in my original post, I tried to make it simple and succeeded in confusing the issue. I have a leading “Backup Program” that will not span DVD’s, I have been advised that if I get rid of the burner programs e.g. InCD from the system tray this would fix the problem.
I created a user just to use for backups, I even named it the user “Backup” but the start menu from the all user profile loads InCD etc. hence my example of the new user not being able to access certain programs. Really all I have to do is move these shortcuts to a temporary folder and see what happens.

I will make a further posting after I try moving the items and doing a backup. Sorry to confuse you.

Ted

Reply | Quote

Thanks for the explanation.

InCD doesn’t run from the Start Menu, it is started from the registry key HKLMSoftwareMicrosoftWindowsCurrent VersionRun

HKLM is HKEY_Local_Machine and means that it runs regardless of the user. I guess you could delete the key and add it to HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftware… instead.

StuartR

Reply | Quote

From any account with Administrative rights run MSCONFIG. In MSCONFIG window click Startup tab and uncheck from the list any programs related to CD burning.

Advise your users start InCD manually before using MRW- or UDF-formatted rewritable CDs (CD-RWs).

Reply | Quote

Thanks Kaplinb, I think I can achieve my objective fairly easily by closing most items in the System Tray where possible then using msconfig to close the others while I do the backup.

If I run msconfig, close InCd etc, reboot close as many as possible of the other items in the System Tray there should not be any conflicts in doing a backup and spanning disks.

Ted

Reply | Quote