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Windows 10 Enterprise LTSB 2016

I've created a startup item that I anticipate the students who use the PC's will be tempted to disable. (It prevents moving the position of icons on the desktop - DeskLock.) How can I disable a certain user from disabling their Startup items in Task Manager? The students use a single shared local account.

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I imagine this would be a very common need, especially in school environments/computer labs, but I surprisingly can't find a single result on the subject in my Google searches.

A Windows-native solution is preferred (i.e. Group Policy, Registry) to prevent memory usage, but am very open to any viable solution.

I saw Disable task manager for restricted user on Windows 7 Home Premium that I might look more into for Windows 10 & Googled ways to disable Task Manager in Windows 10 through Group Policy Editor, but I'd prefer the students still be able to access the Processes tab of Task Manager so they can 'End Now' hanging processes.

(Even though disabling Task Manager through Group Policy is a viable solution for me, I'm still going to go ahead and post this for the sake of the online community, in case there's a way to only disable the Startup tab functionality in Task Manager.)

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  • Would deleting the desktop and recreating the shortcuts on each login using a login script perhaps be a better solution?
    – Peadar
    Commented Aug 10, 2017 at 11:20
  • You need to Disable Task Manager to prevent this type of usage
    – Ramhound
    Commented Aug 10, 2017 at 11:43

1 Answer 1

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There are 2 startup folders: a local Startup folder (affects the logged-in user) and a global Startup folder (affects all users).

If you put a shortcut/exe in the local user's startup folder, that local user will be able to enable/disable that Startup item at will, even without Administrator privileges.

To access the local startup folder, run the following in Windows Run ([Windows key]+R):

shell:startup

Solution: If you put a shortcut/exe in the global Startup folder, non-Administrators will not be able to Enable/Disable it. The button will be greyed out. But they will still be able to open Task Manager and End hanging tasks, etc.

To access the global startup folder, run the following in Windows Run ([Windows key]+R):

shell:common startup
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