Is there a way with group policy or 3rd party tool to prevent access to the
CDROM, floppy and USB drives for certain users.

I am managing a suit of student computers, and I wish to disable access to
the removable drives when a group of student logs on, but if another group
log on the drivers are there for use.

Currently its done manually by disabling and enabling as required in device
manager, but I am looking for a more graceful domain method of achieving
this.

Its for educational use in a school so cash is very very limited.

You can use Group Policy at the domain level to restrict some access to
drives via Explorer, but not USB. Be sure to read the full description of
what the restriction does as it may not work if a user can get command
prompt access which may be done in many ways. Look under user
configuration/administrative templates/Windows components/Windows Explorer
for possible restictions.

Otherwise there are third party applications such as Device Lock that may do
what you need and I believe they have a free time limited download. ---
Steve

http://www.protect-me.com/

"Paul Landregan" wrote in message
news:2g43ojF400kqU1@uni-berlin.de...
> Is there a way with group policy or 3rd party tool to prevent access to
the
> CDROM, floppy and USB drives for certain users.
>
> I am managing a suit of student computers, and I wish to disable access to
> the removable drives when a group of student logs on, but if another group
> log on the drivers are there for use.
>
> Currently its done manually by disabling and enabling as required in
device
> manager, but I am looking for a more graceful domain method of achieving
> this.
>
> Its for educational use in a school so cash is very very limited.
>
>

"Steven L Umbach" wrote in message
news:%23begTeSNEHA.2844@tk2msftngp13.phx.gbl...
> You can use Group Policy at the domain level to restrict some access to
> drives via Explorer, but not USB. Be sure to read the full description of
> what the restriction does as it may not work if a user can get command
> prompt access which may be done in many ways. Look under user
> configuration/administrative templates/Windows components/Windows Explorer
> for possible restictions.
>
> Otherwise there are third party applications such as Device Lock that may
do
> what you need and I believe they have a free time limited download. ---
> Steve
>
> http://www.protect-me.com/
>
> "Paul Landregan" wrote in message
> news:2g43ojF400kqU1@uni-berlin.de...
> > Is there a way with group policy or 3rd party tool to prevent access to
> the
> > CDROM, floppy and USB drives for certain users.
> >
> > I am managing a suit of student computers, and I wish to disable access
to
> > the removable drives when a group of student logs on, but if another
group
> > log on the drivers are there for use.
> >
> > Currently its done manually by disabling and enabling as required in
> device
> > manager, but I am looking for a more graceful domain method of achieving
> > this.
> >
> > Its for educational use in a school so cash is very very limited.
> >
> >
>

I was looking at going deeper into the OS to disable devices. Not disabling
their icons in expolorer, but actually disable the devices themselves.
Depending who logs on, entriy in the registry are altered enabling or
disabing devices as required. But cannot find out how to do it.

I will have a look at the link you provided and see if it does what we need.

>