How can I prevent 'Open Volume Control'?

[elsiegee40]

Our little darlings in Year 6 are winding everyone up, me in particular... they have discovered the Volume Control in the System Tray.

 

Left click and you can change volume or mute

 

Right click and you can 'Open Volume Control'

 

I don't have a problem with the former, but with the latter: in the full Volume Control panel, they have discovered that muting Wave, SW Synth, CD Player they mute the sound on the PC. The unsuspecting next user of the PC uses right click and the sound looks fine, but they can hear nothing.

 

I get told the PC doesn't work, right click, untick the boxes and am coming close to strangling our entire Year 6.

 

They cannot right click on the desktop, but that doesn't prevent them doing so in the system tray. Is there a way of preventing them from playing this little game with the Volume Control please? I don't want to prevent them from using the basic Volume Control.

Edited March 18, 2009 by elsiegee40

[JJonas]

control panel.... sounds and audio devices.... untick place volume control on task bar

[Michael]

You could hide the notification altogether (so only the clock appears) using Group Policy or alternatively, restrict the Volume Control executable using Software Restriction Policies.

 

User Config > Admin Templates > Start Menu and Taskbar

 

Hide the notification area - Enabled

 

Block %SystemRoot%\system32\sndvol32.exe using Software Restriction Policies.

[elsiegee40]

The trouble is that I would like them to be able to use the basic volume control - make it quieter and loouder, using the mute.

 

I just don't want them to be able to right click and get the main Volume control panel (and then muting everything except the main volume!)

[Michael]

I understand what you're trying to do and I can relate to you, as I often get "the sound isn't working requests" and 99% of the time someone has muted it and walked away.

 

It's difficult to isolate just the main volume, however I know RM have created a tool I think would do exactly as you'd like, but still, the children do leave it on mute. Next time I'm in I'll have a look for the MSI (if there is one). I don't see why it shouldn't work on its own on a vanilla XP machine.

[p858snake]

I think i've seen a script floating around on the forums that resets all the volume levels to a preset amount, eg: all on the first marker + master muted, but then again i could be dreaming it again. This would be prefect to set to run on students user so when classes log into computers with enclosed speakers they don't all blast out.

[SYNACK]

I think i've seen a script floating around on the forums that resets all the volume levels to a preset amount, eg: all on the first marker + master muted, but then again i could be dreaming it again. This would be prefect to set to run on students user so when classes log into computers with enclosed speakers they don't all blast out.

 

http://www.edugeek.net/forums/windows/10424-resetting-volume-login.html#post105679

[tech_guy]

We hide everything and use volumescroller - nice little application.

[rocknrollstar]

We use nircmd NirCmd - Freeware command-line tool , which runs in a login script to set the volume to mute on the laptops, and a normal level on desktop computers. Works great, and is free.

[elsiegee40]

We use nircmd NirCmd - Freeware command-line tool , which runs in a login script to set the volume to mute on the laptops, and a normal level on desktop computers. Works great, and is free.

 

That looks like a handy little utility, I will do some investigation on it. Thanks

[zag]

Use nircmd here to mute the sound on login and seems to work. Doesn't stop the kids messing with the volume but it does make it pointless to change things for the next user. Also keeps the sounds to a minimum during lessons.

[elsiegee40]

Whoopee!

 

I LOVE nircmd! I have just been playing with it and that is being rolled out over lunchtime in the ICT Suite! Result!

 

Thank you all!