Windows 2000 Quick Fixes

Keep another user from shutting down your system

If you share a system with other users, and if your system provides local or network services that need to be up all the time, you might need to prevent other users from shutting down the system. For example, if you use the Fax service to accept incoming faxes, shutting down the system means you’ll miss faxes sent to you while the system is down. Or perhaps you share folders that need to be available all the time to other users on the network. Shutting down makes those folders unavailable. Preventing other users from shutting down the computer means they can log off, but they can’t shut down the computer.

Prevent system shutdown

The ability to shut down the computer is one of the many rights that can be assigned to a group or user. By default, on a Windows 2000 workstation, members of the Users, Power Users, Administrators, and Backup Operators groups can shut down the computer. The most straightforward way to prevent others from shutting down the system is to limit the groups that have that right. For example, you could remove the right from the Users group, or even remove it from all but the Administrators group, depending on which users still need the ability to shut down the computer.

You configure rights through the Local Security Policy console. As with other security settings, rights can be inherited from the domain security policy; if one exists, it overrides locally defined rights. Here’s how to reassign the right to shut ...