Access to Recording controls but not access to Control Panel

[notalot]

Struggling a little with this one.

 

I need to give access for students to control the Microphone volume in Windows 7 but not to be able to access the control panel.

 

Currently we block access to the control panel using the "Prohibit access to the Control panel" GPO however under Windows 7 this also blocks access to the Recording options from the Sound icon on the toolbar.

 

When we disable this GPO we are able to access the Recording options however you are able to see everything in the control panel. Because of this I added the GPO "Show only specified Control panel items" then added Microsoft.Sound. This made it so that you couldn't see anything other than sound from the control panel however if you know what the CPL file is for the control panel item you can lunch it without any restrictions.

 

The other option to all of this is to set the Microphone recording volume to full using NIRCMD however this requires you to have something plugged in to the Microphone socket on the pc.

 

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

[Michael]

What about a direct shortcut to:

 

%SystemRoot%\system32\SoundRecorder.exe

[glennda]

rather then block access to the control panel you need to only allow these control panel items - See here for the info Windows Control Panel Applet Shortcuts

[notalot]

What about a direct shortcut to:

 

%SystemRoot%\system32\SoundRecorder.exe

 

Thanks for the idea, however this is the sound recorder not the volume controls

 

rather then block access to the control panel you need to only allow these control panel items - See here for the info Windows Control Panel Applet Shortcuts

 

How would I achieve this using GPO? I've tried User Configuration>Administrative templates>control panel>Show only specified Control Panel items.

 

This does hide everything other than Sound which is what I want to happen however it doesn't stop you lunching a shortcut to Add and remove or display

[notalot]

Any further thoughts?

[earlyriser]

I've got this need too, on a suite of new Windows 7 PC's for our Music department. Did you ever find a resolution?

[mac_shinobi]

instead of blocking the control panel can you not just block specific files , specifically cpl files ( excluding the one for audio / sound ) ??

 

If this is not an option then there must be a free utility to control the windows audio / recording etc ?

 

2 that I found via a google search below

 

http://www.reallyeffective.co.uk/sound-control/

 

http://www.actualsolution.com/power_mixer/

Edited September 6, 2012 by mac_shinobi