Deleting or renaming "My Computer"

[Benji1]

How do I stop students deleting or renaming their "My Computer" Icon on the desktop ?

We use roaming profiles and I know there are pros to mandatory profiles but at the moment roaming profiles work for us. lol

The students cannot get context menus. The way they delete it is to hightlight it and press delete on the keyboard.

It's pain then because the only way we can get it back is to delete thier profile.

Any ideas ?

[eean]

high tech way: Make a custom group policy template that sets the relevant registry keys. (I can't remember seeing one built into windows, but someone may know different).

Low tech way:
Make a registry file:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\CLSID\{20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B30309D}]
@="My Computer"

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\CLSID\{20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B30309D}\DefaultIcon]
@=hex(2):25,00,53,00,79,00,73,00,74,00,65,00,6d,00,52,00,6f,00,6f,00,74,00,25,\
  00,5c,00,65,00,78,00,70,00,6c,00,6f,00,72,00,65,00,72,00,2e,00,65,00,78,00,\
  65,00,2c,00,30,00,00,00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\HideDesktopIcons\NewStartPanel]
"{20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B30309D}"=dword:00000000

(If this copies and pastes incorrectly, just follow the above regristy paths and export the keys there).

Save it as a reg file.
On your logon script do: regedit.exe -s <reg filename>.reg

You may need to enable silent use of regedit in your lockdown policy.
If you want to test the reg file (once you have logged in) hit f5 to see the effect. Hopefully the logon script will execute early enough for it to apply.

[plexer]

Do they even need my computer on their desktop? just remove it.

Ben

[Benji1]

Yes they do. I'm all for locking down PC's but if we don't "try" to give them the same experience they would have in the real world they won't pick up the skills for later life.

Until we gave students a "My Computer" Icon all they did was save stuff through programs. Only when they saw the mess they created did they learn to put things into folders.

[eean]

The only icon on the desktop enabled by default in Windows XP is recycle bin. I've enabled my computer and my documents too, because that's how I like it (and also I'm primary), but I wonder if they should learn to access them through the start menu if that's the route microsoft are going down. (Not that I want to be dictated to by M$!)