remove "devices" from devices and printers

[mrbios]

Does anyone know of a hack that will remove the devices section from the devices and printers panel?

 

Also this one might be a bit easiest to answer: on my test network i have a windows 7 and windows XP client to test policy changes and i have a problem where everythings fine on windows 7 but on the windows XP client every explorer folder opens in a new window rather than the same window and i can't find the policy for the life of me, any suggestions?

[oliphanj]

Here is what I had to do..

I hide the Control Panel all together. And placed a Printers Shortcut on the desktop which shows all of the printers installed. Fix below.. Part 1 just explains how to hide the "devices and printers" But if you have gotten this far with the issue I am sure with Group Policy that you can figure out how to hide the entire control panel.

 

PROBLEM: Workaround needed to hide the Devices View in the Devices and Printers Control Panel Applet.

RESOLUTION: Following steps were provided as a workaround to achieve desired results:

1. Disable the “Devices and Printers” from Control Panel using the Group Policy. We can use the policy “Hide specified control panel items” to remove the control panel item from the Control Panel window:

a. Edit a GPO on the domain or create a local policy using Gpedit.msc on the computer.

b. Navigate to User Configuration\Policies\Administrative Templates\Control Panel.

c. Double-click Hide specified control panel items in the right pane, select Enable, click Show button, and type Microsoft.DevicesAndPrinters.

 

2. Once this policy is in place, we go to Regedit and create this following Entry, this will create a Shortcut for Printers Folder on the Desktop of the user.

 

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

 

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Desktop\NameSpace\{2227a280-3aea-1069-a2de-08002b30309d}

@="Printers"