New computer desktop prank

December 3, 2013 8:26 AM

I am setting up a work associates new computer and decided to have some fun with it. I’ve added a theme and desktop slide show featuring things like William Shatner, clowns, Captain Picard, Duck Dynasty, among other silly things. How do I lock a desktop background slideshow in Windows 7 other than with group policies?

So with the group policies I can go to user configuration/administration templates/control panel and personalization. From there I can lock a theme and “prevent changing desktop background”. When I do this it locks the background on whatever was the current image in the slideshow and stops changing. If I turn off “prevent changing desktop background” I can hide the personalization option in the control panel which should keep my friend from making changes there however you can still change the background by right clicking an image and selecting “set as desktop background”.

So to summarize:

Group policy set to “prevent changing desktop background” – no slideshow

No “prevent changing desktop background” – I can hide personalization in the control panel but the desktop can still be changed by right clicking on any image.

How can keep the user from making changes? I’m trying to remove “set as desktop background” from the right click context menu but can’t figure out how to do it. Any suggestions? Thanks!

posted by Che boludo! to Computers & Internet (2 answers total)

Not sure about the group policies, but you can write a simple batchfile to replace the theme at every restart. Put the path to it in [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run] and put the .bat file in C:\Users\Public\blah.bat
ya know, I'll bet a person could put an .mp3 in there, a truly annoying .mp3, but that would be eeeevil.
posted by theora55 at 12:04 PM on December 3, 2013

Response by poster: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! The computer already makes duck calls when it starts. Arnold Schwarzenegger shows up and makes comments from time to time with various Windows warnings and the like.
posted by Che boludo! at 3:25 PM on December 3, 2013 [1 favorite]