Disable “Ease of access” Settings from the Windows Logon Screen via GPO

Posted on 17/11/2015 by Migrated

KB ID 0000462

Problem

Did a migration of a school the other week, afterwards it seems the “little darlings” had discovered that they could (from the logon screen) access the “Ease of access” settings and enable “High Contrast”, which is obviously hilarious, but annoying for their teachers.

Ease of Access, is designed as part of the accessibility options, and as such has no GPO settings, (I’m assuming because a policy that excludes disabled people would not be the best of things in a modern society). However when these options start to harm productivity we need a mechanism to enable and disable them. (At least then we can enable them for only the people that need them).

Anyway, it took me ages to get it turned off, heres how to do it.

Solution

1. On your domain controller , Start > Administrative Tools > Group Policy Management Console > Either create a new policy and link it to your targeted COMPUTERS or edit an existing one, then navigate to:

[box]Computer Configuration > Policies > Windows Settings > Security Settings > File System[/box]

2. Right click “File system” > Add File > Type in the following;

[box]C:WindowsSystem32Utilman.exe[/box]

3. Click OK > Add in the Everyone group > Deny the following, Read and Execute, List Folder Contents, and Read > Apply > Yes > “Replace existing permissions….” > OK.

4. Then either reboot the clients, wait a couple of hours, or manually run “gpupdate /force” on them.

Change the default Shutdown / Log Off Option via GPO

Posted on 17/11/2015 by Migrated

KB ID 0000465

Problem

Out of the box, the default power option presented to your users is shutdown. People with multiple users on their machines, may prefer the log off option to be the default.

Note: You can also set the default option to:

Shutdown
Sleep
Log off
Lock
Restart
Switch User (Unless blocked by other policy then it will revert to shutdown).
Hibernate

Solution

[box]
User Configuration > Policies > Administrative Templates > Start Menu and Taskbar
[/box]

Locate the setting “Change Start Menu power button”.

2. Edit to the required action, i.e. Log off.

3. Then either reboot the clients, wait a couple of hours, or manually run “gpupdate /force” on them.

Windows Key Has Stopped Working (Logitech G15)

Posted on 17/11/2015 by Migrated

KB ID 0000749

Problem

I jumped on my main PC at home to do something the other day, being Windows 8 I tend to use the Windows key a LOT (Windows Key+R and +E, and +X for example).

Windows 8 Shortcut Keys

But the windows key did nothing? I tried CTRL+Esc, and that worked? I was starting to think that I had a faulty keyboard.

Solution

Turns out there’s nothing wrong with my keyboard at all, as its primarily designed for the gaming market, there’s the option to disable the Windows key. After all you wouldn’t want to be at a crucial point in your game and accidentally hit the Windows key would you?

Either me or one of my kids had turned this feature on mistakenly.

Simply move the selector switch indicated (Next to the MR Key) and the Windows key will start working again.

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Windows Key Has Stopped Working (Logitech G15)

Problem

Solution

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