Printers and Faxes Icon

[disinfo]

Hello All,

Is it possible to remove the "Printers And Faxes" Icon from the XP Start menu via group policy?

The affected machines are on a Windows 2000 Domain

Thanks!

[Geoff]

No as standard no. However here is a ADM template to do it.

CLASS MACHINE

CATEGORY StartMenu

 POLICY "Hide Printers and Faxes on Start Menu"

  KEYNAME "SoftwareMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionExplorerAdvanced"

   EXPLAIN "Enabling this setting will hide the Printers and Faxes icon on the Start Menu.  Disabling this setting will show the Printers and Faxes on the Start Menu.
Setting this to 'Not Configured' will keep the previous registry setting."

   VALUENAME "Start_ShowPrinters"
   VALUEON NUMERIC 0
   VALUEOFF NUMERIC 1

 END POLICY

END CATEGORY

[Dos_Box]

I can't find what I'm looking for, but what you can use is the following:-

GPO - User Configuration - Administrative Templates - Control Panel - Prevent addition of printers and Preven deletion of printers.

To remove the Icon I would suggest a default user profile change, although there must be a way to do it in GPO. The Start Menu and Taskbar GPO section seems very complete, apart from having no option to remove the Printers icon. Very bizzare.

[disinfo]

Hi Geoff,

Thanks for that, never imported an ADM file before, I will have to look into that, any pointers?

Dos_Box, i really wanted to avoid changing the profile as its working fairly well, If this ADM file works i'll be sorted.

Matt

[indie]

Copy the above text and paste it into notepad (remember to put a carriage return after "END CATEGORY", save the file as printer.adm and put it in the following folder:

%SystemRoot%\Sysvol\Sysvol\YourDomainName\Policies \{31B2F340-016D-11D2-945F-00C04FB984F9}\Adm\

Now just edit your Group Policy as normal, there should be a "StartMenu" folder under Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates

You might have to do View > Filtering > Unselect "Only show policy settings that can be fully managed" to see the policy setting. HTH

[disinfo]

thanks, got it sorted, applied it, will see if it works tommorrow.

Thanks All

Matt

[disinfo]

Not managed to get this working,

I've managed to get in imported, applied it, replicated it amongst all the domain controllers, but its not working on the clients.


Matt

[tarquel]

I personally do the same a DB - handy for the ser to be able to delete his/her own documents that they "didnt mean to print" lol

With it locked down right, it works well....

However, there must be a way as you wouldnt have that icon in a Kiosk style interface lol

G2g...
Nath

[indie]

There's a setting to hide this in the Microsoft Shared Computer Toolkit.

Shared Computet Toolkit Handbook

Remove Printers and Faxes icon. Prevents users from accessing the Printers and Faxes window through the icon on the Start menu.

[disinfo]

Thanks again, i'll take a look at the shared computer toolkit.

The only reason i'm wanting to do this is because teachers are telling me certain students are prioritising documents and jumping the queue.

The permissions on the printer (and all our printers) are set so students can print only.

Having logged on as a student and tried to set the priority myself i get access denied. I doubt its actually happening, but I just wanted to take away the printers and faxes icon as another step.

Matt

[kevinmcaleer]

I'd advice caution when removing the printers icon from control panel with group policy (there is an option for it by the way guys, under User Config->Admin Templates->Control Panel->Hide Specific Control Panel Applets, hide or show specific applets)

The reason I'd advice caution is because I hide the printers icon once and users could print anything as usual apart from within Internet Explorer, they got a strange message about default printers. word and other office applications were fine. When I enabled the printers icon in control panel everything worked fine.

-Kev