Suggestions for setting up a kiosk mode in Windows 7

Question

I'm exploring a simple way to create a kiosk mode for Windows 7. I work at a property management company that managements apartment homes. Each property has a business center with PC's available for resident use. Right now we're paying for software to severely lock down the PC's so resident can't trash them, which they do every chance they get. I'm looking for a much simpler and cost-effective solution.

My thought is to restrict the "resident" account to User priviledges and delete that user profile at every startup. They won't be able to install apps or save anything to the PC permanently that way.

I'm having trouble with the delete the profile. Most tools to delete profiles focus on deleting profile older than a set timeframe. Those won't work because I can't set them for less than 24 hours. I tried a simple "rd C:\Users\Resident /s /q" in a scheduled task, but that fails to run prior to logon under SYSTEM or an admin acct's credentials. These are basic PC's without powershell 3 installed, so most powershell scripts are out.

It just needs to be a simple destruction of the profile. Quick and dirty and let Windows build a new one at each reboot. Any thoughts or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. :)

Answer 1

I've found my answer.

I added a shutdown batch script to machine group policy that does the following...

NET USER Resident /DELETE
RD C:\Users\Resident\ /S /Q
NET USER Resident /ADD
NET USER /COMMENT:"Resident"
NET USER /FULLNAME:"Resident"
NET USER /PASSWORDCHG:NO
NET USER /EXPIRES:NEVER
WMIC PATH Win32_UserAccount WHERE NAME='Resident' SET PasswordExpires=FALSE
REG DELETE "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList\S-1-5-21" /f

This removes and readds the account, deletes the folder and associated registry entries. I have an admin account that won't be adversely affected by the key removal at all. This accomplishes what I want. The account is restricted in the way I need, and it is refreshes at every reboot.

My last action was to create a task to reboot the PC nightly.

SCHTASKS /CREATE /TN "NightlyReboot" /TR "SHUTDOWN -R -F -T 0" /SC DAILY /ST 03:00:00 /SD 01/01/2013

That'll 'bout do it. :)

Thank you everyone for your help and suggestions. I was able to take a little something from everything and make a sound solution. And now I've saved us $6-7k in yearly licenses fees. WOOHOO!!