Group Policy Setting

[blemoine]

i am running a Active Directory on Windows Server 2003. We have about 30 Workstations. my boss was wondering if we could remove the "games" (windows games) from all the workstations. Is there a group policy setting that will get this done or do i have to remove them all individually?

 

[nweaver]

I don't know if a GPO can remove the apps, but you can probably have a policy that removes them from the menu, deletes the executable and/or blocks the executables from running/being renamed.

 

[stash]

If the clients are XP, you can use software restriction policies to prevent the games from being run.

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodte...l/winxppro/maintain/rstrplcy.mspx#EGAA

 

[casper114]

What I like to do is remove the start button completely with GPO and setup icons on the desktop for all necessary apps.

 

[Devistater]

Good question, I'm setting up my first 2003/xp pro network and I may need to do some of this too 🙂

 

[gaidin123]

You could probably just write a batch script to delete the executables or only allow administrators access to the game files/dirs. Software restriction policies in GPOs only restrict based on exe name so if someone just tried changing the name they would defeat your cool security model. 🙂

I would assume your users will not be administrators of their boxes or else they could install games wherever, whenever. If they were really hard up and you allow external web access they could just go to the yahoo or msn games websites and play some cool ones there. 😉

Gaidin

 

[stash]

Software restriction policies in GPOs only restrict based on exe name so if someone just tried changing the name they would defeat your cool security model

No. Please read the article I linked.

 

[nweaver]

unless you restrict the renaming/copying of the executable.

Other option might be to just change the permissions on the games folder to Nobody denied access. That would probably do the trick.

 

[stash]

unless you restrict the renaming/copying of the executable

You don't even need to do that. Please people, RTFA.