Removing Screen Resolution and Personalize shell extensions from a users desktop session.

By default when working in a RDSH environment, normal users wont be allowed to access the ‘personalize’ option on the desktop. This article helps work around that.

When a user right clicks on the desktop, by default they get access to commands to manipulate the appearance of the desktop. As I restricted access to the control panel, the two options below were generating errors in the users sessions:

The error generated is your standard group policy restrictions error message as below:

While digging into this further I found the following registry key that corresponds to the two prompts we see above.

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\DesktopBackground

Under this key, you can see both entries that appear on the shell extension menu;

The problem with this key is, its owned by the TrustedInstaller account, and by default administrators cannot modify it. To modify this  key and hide this menu from users (but maintain it for administators) please follow the below steps.

Source: http://andrewmorgan.ie/2012/01/16/removing-screen-resolution-and-personalize-shell-extensions-from-a-users-desktop-session/

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