Freeze Desktop

[TheNNS]

Is there any way that I can freeze my desktop, or block it somehow, so that my little brother can't change the background and/or screensaver?

I'm sure there's software out there. Running xp, by the way.

[DavidRyan]

Run the Management Console (start > run > mmc > enter), add the Group Policy snap-in.
Navigate to the User Configuration | Administrative Templates | Desktop directory and read through your options there.

[Comatose]

If it's XP Home, DavidRayan's Method won't work. I have found a way to disable changing the wall paper, but changing the screen saver is still in the works....
start, run, regedit
open hkey_local_machine
open SOFTWARE
open Microsoft
open Windows
open CurrentVersion
open policies
if you don't have an ActiveDesktop Folder below Policies, right click on the policies folder, choose new, key. Name it ActiveDesktop. If you DO have the ActiveDesktop folder, open it up.
Now, in the right pane, right click, choose new, and select DWORD Value. Name the new blue binary looking icon to "NoChangingWallpaper". Once it's there, and named, double click on it, and change it from 0 to 1.
Hit Ok. The desktop wallpaper shouldn't be able to be changed now.

[TheNNS]

And if I want to change this, I just undo the steps right?

[Comatose]

yup, or you can change the value from 1 to zero... whichever floats your boat ;)

[TheNNS]

Sweet, that's just what I wanted. Thanks.

[Comatose]

In fact, if you want to get crazy, you can do this:
1. Open Notepad (start, run, type in "notepad" without quotes)
2. Paste this code into the notepad document:

dim wsh
set wsh = createobject("WScript.Shell")
wsh.regwrite"HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\policies\ActiveDesktop\NoChangingWallpaper", 1, "REG_DWORD"

3. Click File, Save
4. Change "Save As Type" to "All Files"
5. For File Name, Set it to "Disable.vbs" (without quotes)
and save it somewhere you would like
-You can name this anything, as long as you keep the .vbs

[cm103]

Is there any way that I can freeze my desktop, or block it somehow, so that my little brother can't change the background and/or screensaver?

I'm sure there's software out there. Running xp, by the way.

You could give him his own user name and password and set his user account to be a regular user and tweak the local policy settings for users or try some of the software I have listed below. I'm a system admin for a university computing labs and we use the first one which works great and are evaluating the second Not sure if I can post liks here so I'll post the names and you can pull them up on Google.

Deep Freeze from Faronics
Clean Slate (under eval now but claims to have more features than Deep Freeze. Most of these features are more geared towards enterprise users but can help you customize how the software runs.)

What these do are lock the drives. A user logged in can have full admin rights and change or mess up the machine in any way. When the box is restarted, ot back to how it originally was. Check them out and see if thats what you needed.