Quick Launch, in the Terminal Services forum on BrianMadden.com

I have a pretty restrictive GP enforced on my TS but I can't find where I have this locked down. None of the regular users can enable the "Show Quick Launch", it is greyed out. Admins can change theirs but not domain users. I have searched the internet and all I can find is registry hacks, but i don't want to go in that direction.

Any help would be appreciated.

Joe

I'm pretty sure that Quick Launch is a part of Active Desktop (and its pretty likely that you have AD denied). Try turning it back on and seeing if the QL bar comes back. You may not want to do that on a permanent basis, but at least you'll know.

There is no policy available for the quick launch area. It is stored in application data\microsoft\internet explorer\quick launch.

I think you disabled(prefent) the use of taskbar menu's this way you can lockdown the menubar. To change items in quick lunch either fillup the default user (for new users) or use loginscript(s) to copy lnk files to the quick lunch folder.

Hi,

Quick Launch is enabled/disabled by changing the toolbar properties. It has nothing to do with the active desktop. Once enabled you do have to have the appropriate links copied to %appdata%\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch.

The GP controlling whether you can change toolbar composition is one of 2 policies:

User Configuration > Administrative template > desktop > "Prevent adding, dragging, dropping and closing the taskbar's toolbars" or "prohibit adjusting desktop toolbars".

There isn't any easy way to turn on Quick Launch for your users if it's been disabled since it's controlled by a few bits in a long binary string, HKCU\SOftware\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Streams, Settings. I haven't had the time to find out what bit does what yet so if you do have the time and patience to find out, let me know ;-)

The value isn't updated 'til logoff so just patching the settings value on logon won't do anything useful unless you can restart explorer or I think you could probably use the Flexrefresh (to update explorer after patching settings value) from the Flex Profiles kit (www.loginconsultants.com).

Anyway, set up an unlocked (toolbar policies set to not configured, admin would be fine) desktop session with everything set up the way you want, grab the settings value from that session and then make a script to copy the settings to a users profile together with some way to make explorer reload. You could probably do the whole lot, easily with parts of the flex profile kit and the values as an *.ini file.

regards,

Rick

Well, I got it fixed. I compared my group policy with another that allowed it and it worked. The bad thing is that I changed 4 things at once, so I don't know which one of them was the culprit.

But now I have another issue. I have quick launch enabled, but they can't add anything to it....

I'm sure that you have since resolved this but part of the ability to copy shortcuts into the quick launch bar is controlled by the "Prevent access to drives from My Computer" policy in UC/AT/Windows Components/Windows Explorer.

Joe -

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