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How can I disable elements of the Display control panel applet?
John Savill
March 4, 1999
1 Min Read
A. Again using policies it is possible to disable elements of the display control panel applet, however it can also be accomplished using the registry editor
Start the registry editor (regedit.exe)
Move to HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionPoliciesSystem
From the Edit menu select New - DWORD value
Enter any of the following as outlined in the table below.
Double click the new value and set to 1
Close the registry editor
NoDispAppearancePage | Removes the Appearance tab which means users cannot change the colours or colour scheme |
NoDispBackgroundPage | Removes the Background tab meaning no more Pamela Anderson background (damn!) |
NoDispScrSavPage | Removes the Screen Save tab |
NoDispSettingsPage | Removes the Settings and the Plus tab |
These change takes immediate effect and any disabled tab will not be displayed.
Of course the user can go into the registry and change these back which is why it is better to implement these as policies (which is what I do), however as they take immediate effect there is nothing to stop someone creating a reg script to run as part of the start-up group, which sets it to how they want to get round the policy, but I would never condone this :-)
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