I'm a developer and not much of a server admin, but am working on a project which requires me to build code which operates in a Windows 2003 domain environment, with XP client machines and so I need to setup a test environment.
I have setup a virtual server and virtual client. I did a fresh install of Windows 2003 R2 onto the server and XP SP3 onto the client. I setup the server as an Active Directory Domain Controller and DNS server. I setup a new forest and domain, then added a new Organisational Unit, created a test user account within it. Then on my client I added the machine to the domain, saw the welcome message and then proceeded to login with my test user account. All worked fine :-)
Then I had a bit of a tinker with making the account use a mandatory profile, which also went well and is working fine.
Now my problem; I need to be able to apply a restricted policy to the client account, to remove the Control Panel, My Computer, 'Run...' option and so on. I downloaded the Group Policy Management tool and then configured my Organisational Unit to have a new group policy. I then edited the policy, disabling access to a variety of things. I logged into the client but didn't see any change. No amount of trying seems to make the policy settings affect the test account. I've tried running GPUPDATE on the client, have logged out and in but nothing seems to work. Thinking my tinkering with the Mandatory Profile may have had some affect I created a new user within the same Organisational Unit, but if I login then this new account also seems to have access to the things I've restricted.
I've been reading articles and am trying to work it out, but am starting to feel a little overwhelmed by what I had expected to be a fairly simple task. Can anyone provide help me understand where I'm going wrong?
Thank you.