Need a solution to stop students from rotating screen on laptops with intel graphics

Question

We have some students who have figured out how to rotate the screen using either the hotkey combination or right click context menu. It's easy to fix but it's time consuming because no matter how many times I tell people how to fix it there's always someone that will come up to me.

Now I need two things. First, is there a way to disable screen rotation? Second, I need a script to reset the screen rotation to normal on logon and logoff.

The solutions need to be able to be deployed from a Win2003 server to WinXP clients. I have way too many computers to go through by hand to uncheck enable hot keys on the intel control panel.

Solution 1

I wrestled with the same problem. My solution was to lock down the control panel and disable the Intel program. I disabled the Intel program with a startup script that ran a registry update:

startup.bat:

reg delete HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run /v IgfxTray /f

Solution 2

Students you say? Sounds like a job for Windows SteadyState.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/sharedaccess/default.mspx

Alternatively, you could uninstall the Intel driver package and use the standard VGA driver.

Comments

[John Gardeniers]

While I understand that this is being asked in an admin context you may find that the people at Super User can provide more/better answers. Normally cross-posting is frowned upon (although I've never understood why, because many questions cross fields) but this question seems to me to be a perfect candidate for cross-posting.

[dannymilsom]

/agree @John Gardeniers

[Dennis Williamson]

@John: One reason to discourage cross-posting is that often one gets migrated to the other site so now there are two and one has to be closed as a duplicate.

[Zoredache]

It is unfortunate that Microsoft has basically stopped development of Steady State this, and will not be supporting Win7.

[Sergej Alikov]

So say I do stop the launching of the Intel program. How would I fix computers that are already rotated?

[Jason Berg]

If you've already applied my fix, you can simply launch the IgfxTray program yourself, unrotate the screen, then reboot the computer.

[Sergej Alikov]

I don't suppose you also have a script or some kind of a solution to rotate a screen back to normal on logon and logoff as well?

[Jason Berg]

Sorry I don't. Once I applied this registry edit, I never saw any more sideways screens.

[raja]

I tested it on a compaq 500b with intel graphics. If the display settings are locked down they shouldn't be able to do anything. (it's not even availabale in controil panel). As jason mentioned you do have to remove the tray application

[Deer Hunter]

The same answer is already present.