TS 2003 desktop access

[bentley45]

I must be in the minority, because I DO NOT want my users to be able to get to the actual desktop of my Terminal Server 2003. I have created an RDP shortcut that automatically opens the application they need. However, I want to prevent them from changing the properties of this shortcut and logging onto the actual desktop.

I have a TS2000 server and I realize that you can 'lock' the desktop down so that they cannot 'do' anything, but is there any way to prevent the desktop from appearing at all?
Thanks!

 

[mbuechler]

From within Active Directory for each user you can specify which application opens when they log-in to your Terminal Server. Follow these steps on the Windows 2003 (or 2000 Terminal Server) Server logged-in with domain administrative privilages:

1. Click 'Start' | 'Control Panel' | 'Administrative Tools' | 'Active Directory Users and Computer'

2. Navigate to the user's name that you want to edit, right click and choose 'Properties'

3. On the "Environment" tab, enter the program path and start-in directory (the root path of the executable that you're launching) and your users will not be able to override this by editing a shortcut.

 

[bentley45]

Ok, as usual, nothing is simple, so now I find out that I must give the user access to 3 applications. All reside in the same subfolder, so is there still a way to use the environment tab and give them access to all 3?

 

[aquias]

A quick question Bentley, why not just lock down the desktop to kingdom come?

I've used what MB has suggested, although I used group policy to push it, but for multiple applications I think it may be time to give them desktop access and nothing else. Use group policy to lock them out of everything (IE, desktop controls, taskmanager controls, help files, etc...)

Or, another alternative (setting up several policies to launch multiple apps just doesn't strike me as the right thing to do) is to create multiple user accounts for this, one associated with each application and give them an RDP icon for each application, each icon associated with a different username.