Lock down Windows Vista

[vmfive]

We have a lounge at our company where customers can watch television, browse the web(currently on a laptop) and generally relax. To make the are more professional looking and cleaner, we've decided to add 2 Dell XPS One systems.

The laptop has Xp installed and is setup to login as guest only. I know this prevents users from installing program or changing system settings but it still lets them change other minor settings. You can imagine the stuff I find on this system after a few weeks of use. I want to be able to completely lock down the 2 new XPS one systems (which come with Vista Home Premium). I only want to allow the user to run programs that are currently installed (mostly for web browsing anyway). What I mean by lock down is no desktop icon deletion/addiing. No program installation. No way to change IE homepage. Desktop Background/screensaver. Taskbar settings, etc...

These 2 systems will not be on our company domain/network (therefore I cannot force our group policies). They will have a completely separate dsl line connected to a WiFi access point. I'm wondering if Vista has this capability or is there any software I can purchase that has such capabilites.

Thank you in advance.

 

[stash]

Vista has the ability to have multiple local group policies (LGPOs). So AD isn't necessary to lock down machines for some users and not others (like admins).

You may also want to look into mandatory profiles, but I can't remember if that requires roaming profiles or if you can do it with a local profile.

 

[NetGuySC]

Windows SteadyState

Here is a program designed for such a task as yours, unfortunately it is a beta version.

There is a better program that is similar to this, but I just can't remember the name.