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Is there a way of disabling or auto-hiding the task bar for a particular user from within group policy?

I'm trying to set a policy for a user that's used for 'kiosk'-like scenarios with kiosks running Windows 7. I can lock the taskbar settings, disable desktop icons and set my own custom background, but I can't figure out how to make the taskbar not visible when the user is logged in.

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You can't completely disable the taskbar through group policy, only severely limit it. Sounds like you need to configure your kiosks to use a custom shell.

I've heard a few people just create an empty .exe file and point their gpo to it and it essentially is like running a pc without explorer.exe running at all. You can then configure your app to start on bootup. However I'm guessing users would still be able to launch explorer.exe through windows key + R.

The GPO location you're looking for if you're using Server 2003 (not sure about 2008 R2 but it should be similar) User Configuration\Administrative Templates\System\Custom User Interface.

I came across a post awhile ago about this at superuser. Explains quite a bit of the process you'd need to go through.


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Group policy does not disable changing auto-hide for applications. It disables user's ability to change these settings. Application still can change it freely.

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