Block Access to the Control Panel for All Users

Block Access to the Control Panel for All Users

First, open the group policy management console.

Find the organizational unit that contains your user accounts, for me, this is my “ADPRO Users” OU.

Right-click the OU and select “Create a GPO in this domain, and Link it here“

Give the new GPO a name. For example, User – Block Control Panel.

At this point, there is a new GPO linked to all the users but the GPO has no policies set. Right-click on the GPO and select edit.

Browse to User Configuration -> Policies -> Administrative Templates -> Control Panel

Right-click the policy and select “Edit”.

Change the policy setting to “Enabled” and click “OK”.

To verify the GPO is working, reboot a computer and log in with a domain user account.

When you try to open the control panel you should get a pop up message like the one below.

Remember this was a user configuration and only applies when a user logs into the computer. In the next example, I’ll go over a computer GPO.