Restricting WinXP Pro User Accounts

[mrman3k]

Bascially, I want to restrict a guest account on my computer from doing pretty much anything. It would be REALLY grateful if someone could tell me how to do these things:

-disable certain programs from running
-disable some windows functions (such as writing CD's)

Any ideas?

Any help or advice is appreciated.

 

[stash]

Those sound more like things that would be done with through GPOs. And if you are not on a domain, and you restrict the local computer policies, you will restrict it for all accounts, including administrator.

 

[Heretik]

The only way I can think of would be to go to Control Panel, Folder Options, click the View tab. Scroll to bottom and uncheck the box that says "Use Simple File Sharing"

Now you can go through each folder and/or file you want to set permissions for, right click it, and select properties, then security. You can restrict which users are allowed to run those apps/access those folders.

 

[stash]

That will work for third party apps, but I don't think you can disable XP's CD writing function that way. You can edit the local machine policy to turn it off, but then all users wont be able to use it. Which probably isn't a bad idea. Turn off XP's CD writing function, install nero, and then restrict who can run nero using permissions.