Windows XP different start menu for a user account

dod

Occasionally I have visitors whose kids want to play with the computer. I have no problem with this in principle, however I would like to create a separate user account on the computer for them so that when they log in, they will get access to a very simple start menu with just the standard Win XP card games, maybe Paintbrush and MS Word.

I feel uncomfortable with the idea of their having unsupervised internet access, or their inadvertently tampering with documents etc.

I had thought that this would be a trivial thing to do, but I can't find any pointers, and a brief enquiry on IRC leads me to believe that this is not easily achieved.

Can anybody throw any light on this? Or point to a utility prog that will achieve the same end?

Many thanks in advance.

bennyx_o

AFAIK, the only way you can do this is by editing the start menu in the explorer.exe file, which is menu 255 i think. I'm not too sure if you can edit whats in program files or not, maybe someone else on boards does know.

Hope this helps..

Ben

tman

right click on the start button, choose open all users.
right click on it again and choose open.
using the right mouse button, drag the contents of the all users window (prolly just the 'programs' folder) into the other window.
release the right mouse button & choose to move the files.

log on as the guest account, right click on the taskbar and choose properties. switch to the start menu tab and choose customise (the first option should be selected on the start menu tab)
switch to the advanced tab and disable the showing of all the items.
thats about the best advice i can offer

KdjaCL

What Tman said ,as you say they kids you can remove any programs you want from the guest login by deleting them (they not really deleted just the shortcuts on teh start bar are)


kdjac

sceptre

I've my laptop set up with two accounts: seamus and not_seamus. Guess which one everyone else gets to use?

Firstly make sure the drive is formatted as NTFS (keep your documents secure and it'll be handy later). Then set up a second account with ordinary use privileges. Start hacking away at the start menu if you want but actually denying them access to the stuff entirely might be nice. If you want that then post back. Merely deleting a few shortcuts from the start menu isn't worth a damn to the paranoid. It is relatively easily achieved - I just don't want to type out a big long list of instructions or do a google search if you want to stick to the feeble basics. Googling for "secure windows XP" or similar would be a start.

Creamy Goodness

how about sticking shortcuts to the card games on the guest users desktop and auto hide the taskbar.

that's if they are totally computer ilitterate (sp)

ColmOT [MSFT]

You can achieve exactly what you want by using Group Policy (gpedit.msc).

look up ms-its:C:\WINDOWS\Help\howto.chm::/snap_gpe.htm or type in Group Policy in Help.

Very powerful utility.