Hiding Intel Notication Area Icon for all students

[Darylrese]

Hi,

 

On our student machines, we have intel onboard graphics which has a notification icon on the task bar in the bottom right hand side to allow quick changes to be made to the graphics driver. Students keep opening this and changing settings to make the screen black / screen rotate around or changing colours resolutions of monitors.

 

Is there a way to prevent them running this notification icon application or is there a way to hide it altogether through group policy for all student users?

[FN-GM]

The attached ADM template works. Just import it into your computer group policy. It will also diable the hot keys if you like.

intel.zip

[Darylrese]

excellent thank-you! I'll give it a go and do some testing Where did you find the template? Edited October 17, 2012 by Darylrese

[FN-GM]

It was about 18 months ago i got it, i cant recall. Sorry.

[mattianuk]

I found a Gpo to turn off all notification icons in Windows 7 yesterday, let me know if you want me to dig it out for you?

[Darylrese]

Thank-you to you both. The ADM template seems to have worked from testing and the icon no longer appears in the notification area

 

I dont think we need / want to disable all items in the notification area as this will probably disable the anti-virus status notification and LAN connection status etc?

[mattianuk]

Personally I don't want kids to see these anyway, all they need is a clock, only thing they may need to fiddle with is the volume, but when they need to I reckon I can just throw a link into the start menu...

 

Hopefully.. should probably test that.... !

[Darylrese]

I think the GPO just collapses or expands the notification area, there's not much on ours anyway at the moment Maybe when it starts getting big we can collapse it

[mattianuk]

No, in Windows 7 it specifies hiding it, they can only see/click on the clock (which they cant do anything too...)

 

As we have just done a completely new network/domain things are very locked down... but nobody minds because it is rocket fast.

[Darylrese]

Excellent. We have just installed a new network too over the summer! So much better than the RM system we had before! Do you have to logon as an administrator to see the status of the connection / anti-virus etc then?

[mattianuk]

Well anti virus is centrally managed - if there is no network connection they will not be able to log in anyway! It is also usually given away because we redirect desktops and start menus, and they disappear.

 

Staff/Admin logins are not restricted.

[Darylrese]

Just given it a try on some test machines, i see what you mean, it looks much cleaner without the notifcation tray. Does this mean also that flash / java / adobe reader update messages will also be hidden? Could kill two birds with one stone here!!

[mattianuk]

I think that is killed by the option to stop pop ups? We certainly never seem them on student accounts. Downside is, that stops papercut NG notifications....

[Darylrese]

You're right, it just came up with a java update window asking for admin to upgrade it....any idea how you stop those?

[localzuk]

You're right, it just came up with a java update window asking for admin to upgrade it....any idea how you stop those?

 

You can stop those by deploying the Java client via an MSI, but using an MST to transform it so it doesn't look for updates.

[mattianuk]

Well, I havent yet needed to roll out Java yet

 

The setting for pop ups is: User config > Administrative Templates > Start Menu and Taskbar > Turn off all balloon notifications Disabled

Turn off feature advertisement balloon notifications