How do I restrict users to install hardware devices on their systems? Ofcourse I know that normally with Windows 2000 and Windows 2003, they will need to have permissions to be able to do so, but what about USB drives? is there a way to disable USB drives in anyway using Group Policies.
One way is to use hardware profiles and disable USB devices and other unwanted devices, but it is too cumbersome and not efficient way. Another way is to user third party devices like SecureNT and disable the USB devices or control them by giving them read only access.
One other way is to do it the way Mitch Tulloch tells us, delete the drivers.cab file and configure the registry as mentioned in Windowsdevcenter. Microsoft way again is to configure it using permissions on %SystemRoot%\Inf\Usbstor.pnf and %SystemRoot%\Inf\Usbstor.inf files or to use registry editor and change the value of a entry,more details can be found here. I am sure that these things can somehow be managed using scripts or whatever. But still would like to see a centralised way of managing and disabling hardware devices!!
Tejas Patel