This question might sound silly but I am going to ask it anyway.  I am a teacher assistant for a middle high school (12 and 13 year olds).  Lately the students newest thing is to dump all the desktop icons into the trash and empty the trash.  Then when another student logs on all the icons are gone and they have to log off and I have to log on as administrator and put them back on the desktop for all users.  This is really getting on my nerves as it is happening everyday and I can not catch the person(s) that are doing this.  Is there a software that will allow a sound if a student tries to move the desktop icon or if they try to erase it?  I was thinking of eliminating the trash can completely but I think they will then just continue to delete the icons regardless of no trash bin.

Any help would be appreciated.  Again I am sorry if this request sounds stupid but you try and do what I do all day and have this consistently happen and you have to restore everything, I guarantee your patience would get really thin.

Thank you in advance for any ideas.

Sure, I just happen to be one of those pesty 14 year olds that replaces the internet shortcut with one that would… say shutdown the computer. Anyway, my science teacher uses a program called Deep Freeze that restores the computer back to it’s original state as soon as you restart it.

Then if YOU want to change something, you just Shift + Double Click the little polar bear in the system tray (where the clock is). It will bring up a password box and you just type the password for the program, tell it to “thaw on next restart” and restart the computer.

When it turns back on, you will be able to change something on the computer that will stick with it. Then you just restart the computer again and that setting you just changed will be permanent. If the kids change it, you just restart the computer and it will be back to normal.

I haven’t yet found a way around this program without spending hours at the computer working through it, but let me know if they find a hole!

Wow I am very impressed to get a reply from a 14 year old.  Thank you so much I will give that a try tomorrow in my computer lab and if they are able to erase a icon I will let you know.  I am assuming this program your science teacher is using is free.  Again thank you so much.  I hope you have a wonderful summer vacation.

If the computers are running off of a main server, and all the student’s user accounts are stored on the server, you can just contact the IT Department. and they can create a user profile on all users so the icons would load when the user login. and if they delete it, the next user that logs on would get the profile from the server, getting fresh copy of the user settings and icons set by the administrator.

Hello and thank you for replying. Our system is on a main server and according to our IT Department there’s nothing they can do.  If I log on as administrator I can see all the student profiles which are suppose to erase when they log off.  But this does not stop them from deleting the icons so that the next person can not use anything.  Very frustrating but I am going to try the Deep Freeze which was recommended and see how that goes.  But I want to thank you so much for taking the time to reply.

Well it looks like I am right back where I was last week.  The software that the 14 year old suggested will not work on our system. According to our IT Department if I place Deep Freeze it will not allow any updates for the printers as well as any other updates.  Which is not good.  So I am still looking for a program that will allow me to know when a student is dumping (erasing) the desktop icons off the computer in my computer lab.

I appreciate everyone’s suggestions.