Loading ...So, my computer’s been running Vista for just over a month now, there’s no going back in my mind. Overall it’s a far more pleasant experience, things just work. That was until my account seemingly dropped into a restricted-access account with the shutdown, restart, standby buttons removed from the Vista Start menu and no access to Task Manager!
I put up with this for a week till I lost it and went on a hunt to pin down the culprit! Sure enough, after shuffling through various support forums I have my worries solved. Fixes for the missing power management features, restricted Run command-line access and Task Manager are included below.
- From the Start menu, click Run and type “gpedit.msc” (without the quotes)
- Group Policy Object Editor will have opened in a new window
- Expand the User Configuration > System tree to view policies for that area
- Double-click the policies you would like to modify and accept changes
- Close Group Policy Object Editor
Common restricted policies
Prevent access to registry editing tools (User Configuration > Administrative Templates > System) - Disabling this policy will allow your current user account to open and modify the system registry using regedit.exe
Prevent access to the command prompt (User Configuration > Administrative Templates > System) - Disabling this policy will allow your current user account to open the Windows command prompt using cmd.exe
Remove Run menu from the Start menu (User Configuration > Administrative Templates > Start Menu and Taskbar) - Disabling this policy will allow the Run button to be visible on the Start menu
Remove and prevent access to the Shut Down, Restart, Sleep, and Hibernate commands (User Configuration > Administrative Templates > Start Menu and Taskbar) - Disabling this policy allows you to access any of these actions from either the Start menu, Windows Security screen or CTRL+ALT+DELETE screen
Enjoy this post? Get future updates sent to you for free! Join by subscribing to the Visser Labs RSS feed.
About the Author - Michael Visser is the founder of Visser Labs. He works as a professional Front-end Web Developer, loves Wordpress, Joomla and helping people get more out of their sites.
7 Comments
I am missing the “white arrow” that was on the shut down button. HP steered me to your webpage for a possible solution. I am not missing a shut down button, only the arrow.
If you have any suggestions, I would appreciate them.
Thanks
Hi Richard,
This sounds really odd, can you send me a screenshot to diagnose this. If I have an idea of what’s happening I can do a search on your behalf and dig up an answer.
Do you know when the arrow vanished?
Hello Michael,
I have similar problem- the white arrow box has got shortened and arrow can not be seen. Any suggestions?
Thanks
Hi Rajiv,
That sounds very familiar to a setting found in Windows XP, I assume it’s also available in Vista.
So the shortcut icon is still there it’s just alot smaller?
same here its the exact same problem. all i get from the arrow now is switch users, log off, or lock nothing els and for some reason when i click on the power icon it only locks the computer
Same problem, no white arrow, it’s a problem with explorer.exe, either do some heavy OS editing (mostly using notepad, and a true booted in copy of command prompt (the one in windows will have limitations in this any restricted setting, it reads as completing things correctly, but upon personal investigation nothing actually happens, and the opperation fails, get a fresh copy of explorer.exe (which I can’t do because of account limitations that seem to have set themselves and a vanishing admin account (won’t even load in safe mode) (I spent a while studying comp sci, and have a wealth of knowledge as to OS manipulation btw) for any mediate level user or lower I recomend a back up and reinstalling windows, for anyone else simply replace explorer.exe, I can probably post a clean version somewhere if anyone wants it, email me for one at cmdamarao@gmail.com I expect this should fix the GUI issue, what tipped me off was forcing it caused explorer to crash and never restart, I had to launch it from firefox…
or if you’re cool, go get a new GUI, I like some of the ones out there with explorer replacements and nice glass looks personally, I wish gnome ran in windows…
one more thing, I apologize for the poor grammer… français?