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I have windows 7 Home Premium Edition. I created a standard user, setup with parental controls enabled.

I want to prevent this user from accessing "My Computer," and in addition, when the user hits Ctrl + Alt + Del I want the options shown to all be greyed out with the exception of the Log Off.

Note that windows 7 Home Premium Edition has no group policy option

How can I accomplish this?

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migrated from serverfault.com Dec 26 '11 at 23:02

This question came from our site for system administrators and desktop support professionals.

2 Answers

up vote 8 down vote accepted

Buy Windows Professional and rent a local IT pro for an hour to set it up how you want.

EDIT:

I've come back to this question with a better attitude. Let me explain myself a bit better. Windows 7 Home Premium does not have many of the resources that the Pro editions have for customizing your user experience. You have two options with one bonus option:

  1. Buy a version of Windows that has the use of local security policies. Windows 7 Professional or Ultimate are your two options there.
    • Bonus option: Then rent a local IT consultant to do what you want. You can scuff about and get it done yourself, but judging by your question, you might do more harm than good if you try to perform this on your own. A reputable local IT consultant with SMB/SOHO experience will be able to perform this in under an hour and for less money than your own personal time and frustration is worth.
  2. Purchase third-party kiosk software that allows you to modify how Windows behaves. Some software that comes to mind is Tricerat, Kioware and SiteKiosk. Certainly those tools are made for larger deployments and have more features than you may currently need, however at least consider them.

Also consider that what you want to do is not possible with native Windows 7 tools and resources. You will need to either upgrade to a professional edition and then modify LGPOs or keep your current edition and purchase a third-party software package.

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We are non-profit organization in MI we just received 20 PCs with windows 7 Home Premium Edition. We consider the upgrade but it is a bit costly for us now. Thank you anyway for your advice. – Eyla Dec 27 '11 at 1:19
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@Eyla I completely understand your situation. For most of my professional career I've worked in the internal IT department of non-profits or as an external contractor. Many times I've had to make solutions using chewing gum and double-sided Scotch tape. Just be advised that those solutions nearly universally cause more loss in the long run and even the ruination of the organization (as doomsday as that sounds, it can happen and has happened). Sad to say, you cannot do exactly what you want using a no-cost solution. – WesleyDavid Dec 27 '11 at 1:30
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up vote 0 down vote

Found this answer in a comment on another thread here and thought it might give you hope:

Greetings. As known, all GPO Policies are really just registry settings, so the effects of GPO can be replicated by manipulating the registry. With some time an effort you can even open the adm and admx files in a text editor and read the exact keys for any particular GPO setting you'd like to replicate.

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What you just wrote does not answer the question at all - could you hit EDIT and provide an answer that fixes this? – Simon Sheehan Dec 28 '11 at 18:15
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