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Question

How do I prevent the desktop icons from being changed.

May 15, 2013 4:46AM PDT

I have read a number of different posts on this and none of them fit the bill. I have Kinder through 8th grade students using Windows XP Pro desktops. They continually change the icon names, delete icons or move them around the desk top. Windows 98 had a way to lock down the desktop from changes like this. However those machines are now gone and I guess Microsoft has very little concern for technology in education as such they removed that option. Does anyone have a solution that does not require rebooting. I would rather not have to reboot 6 times a day.

Discussion is locked

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Answer
Nope
May 15, 2013 5:21AM PDT

Nope, that's not a feature of Windows. Never has been, probably never will be. If you had this functionality before, odds are it was via some third party program, not Windows itself, so it's not that Microsoft simple did away with it.

The one and only possibility that comes to mind, and it may well have some nasty unintended consequences, is to set the user profile's desktop directory as read-only. I don't know if that would stop kids from moving icons around, but it would likely prevent name changes and deleting of icons.

But another possibility is to look at it from the perspective that since you're in the profession of education, think of this as a kind of independent study for the kids. They are experimenting with things, figuring out what works, what doesn't, etc. What kind of a teacher would you be if you stood in the way of any kind of learning?

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Answer
Desktop Icons K-8
Mar 4, 2014 12:41AM PST

I also teach K-8 Technology and understand you situation. This won't help the moving of icons, but you can ask your IT person to disable the right click for the student profile. If they cannot right click, they cannot rename things, delete things, etc. It has really helped with the little kids and helped deter any malicious temptations in the older grade levels - deleting other students work or the "someone deleted my file" excuse.

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Desktop Icons
Mar 14, 2014 9:52AM PDT

Download a freeware program called "Save my Desktop.It works in XP, and 7.