Windows 7 Control Panel icon

[sdc]

Hi

 

We are starting to experiment with deploying Windows 7 clients on our Server 2008 R2 domain. All's working very well, I'm pleased (and surprised!) to report; however, we do have one annoying issue (so far) - for all users, a Control Panel icon appears on the desktop. This doesn't seem to occur for domain admins, but standard users (pupils/staff) all get the icon. It doesn't actually work - the 'restricted' message appears if they double click it - but it would be good to remove the icon somehow to avoid temptation. There must be a way to do this through Group Policies, but I can't seem to find it. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

 

Also, is there any way of disabling libraries completely? At least whilst we have mixed XP and 7 clients, it would seem to make sense to stick to the known and understood 'My Documents' only.

 

Thanks!

Stephen

[EJWill]

Hi

 

We are starting to experiment with deploying Windows 7 clients on our Server 2008 R2 domain. All's working very well, I'm pleased (and surprised!) to report; however, we do have one annoying issue (so far) - for all users, a Control Panel icon appears on the desktop. This doesn't seem to occur for domain admins, but standard users (pupils/staff) all get the icon. It doesn't actually work - the 'restricted' message appears if they double click it - but it would be good to remove the icon somehow to avoid temptation. There must be a way to do this through Group Policies, but I can't seem to find it. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

 

Also, is there any way of disabling libraries completely? At least whilst we have mixed XP and 7 clients, it would seem to make sense to stick to the known and understood 'My Documents' only.

 

Thanks!

Stephen

 

Hi Stephen,

 

The control panel icon we found to be caused by our group policy which forced the classic start menu. When we disabled this to adopt the standard default start menu, it was gone again.

 

There's no way I have found to actually disable libraries, only done my best to hide them.

 

Near the Bottom of this post is how to hide the libraries and other assorted options from Windows Explorer

http://www.edugeek.net/forums/windows-7/47835-windows-7-gotchas-tips-fyi.html#post438279

 

This was the only way I found to change the default windows explorer starting location for new users.

http://www.edugeek.net/forums/windows-7/53626-solution-group-policy-change-windows-explorer-opening-location-pinned-start-menu.html#post490317

 

I hope some of these help.

[sdc]

Thanks for that - we'll give it a try!

[garethedmondson]

Hi Stephen,

 

The control panel icon we found to be caused by our group policy which forced the classic start menu. When we disabled this to adopt the standard default start menu, it was gone again.

 

This doesn't work for us. We have Windows 7 Enterprise running and have the aero theme working fine (except the black background at the moment). Users are redirected to a mandatory desktop which is locked down. They cannot save onto it.

 

However they are still given the Control Panel icon on the desktop. As everyone else, I can disable access but it's still there.

 

Any further ideas from anyone?

 

Cheers

 

Gareth

[martin1]

Any update on this one? I am trying my first Win7 machine for the students and with a pretty basic GP currently running (all other GPO's have been disabled for testing purposes for this week) I am getting the black background, Control Panel icon and no start menu appearing. It's driving me nuts, any ideas?

[dhoward_westexetc]

The black background is caused by this: KB977944 . You can request a patch for this issue.

Control Panel icon I believe is caused by the 'Force Classic Start Menu' policy which you will no doubt have applied because of your XP/Vista machines. If you can remove this policy then it may cure your third issue as well.

Is your start menu a re-directed one?

[martin1]

Ohhh... lovely.

 

Right, well the wallpaper seems straight-forward enough, i'll give that a go in a while.

The start menu has appeared at last with several changes and I 'think' the answer was the setting to remove users home folders from the start menu, as yes I was trying to redirect it to the same place that XP is directed to.

The Control panel is still playing up. I made the change you mentioned above but still not removed. I'll give it a better go now and see if I have missed something.

 

All I really need to do now is sort out those darn Libraries. I am sure it was okay yesterday until I tried to remove the icon from the desktop and now the extra folders are there in the users home folder.

 

 

Thanks for you help, dhoward_westexetc!

[dhoward_westexetc]

All I really need to do now is sort out those darn Libraries. I am sure it was okay yesterday until I tried to remove the icon from the desktop and now the extra folders are there in the users home folder.

 

Thanks for you help, dhoward_westexetc!

 

Deny students access to C:\Users\Public folder. It won't cause the freezing on loading the library then. I had that issue and doing this fixed it.

 

Not sure about the Control Panel icon though......

 

You're very welcome. Don't forget to click the 'Thanks' button by my previous post. It makes me seem more useful!

[martin1]

Control panel sorted: installed the ADM supplied by EJWILL from http://www.edugeek.net/forums/windows-7/46809-windows-7-removing-libraries.html#post430548 which takes care of many things. It even took care of things I want back now and I can't seem to find out how

 

Better than it was though.

 

:S