Due to the COVID-19 outbreak, most users remotely connect to their workstations at work in order to perform their duties and they can accidentally shut down or restart their devices. Another scenario is having a shared device and you do not want users to be able to shut down or restart, thereby leading to data loss. The scenario described here is specifically for Windows 10 and they are also applicable to Windows 11. Kindly refer to the following related guides: How to hide or stop Apps such as OneDrive from opening automatically upon login on Macbook Pro, and Cannot uninstall the OneDrive App: The item “OneDrive” can’t be moved to the Bin because it’s open on Mac, how to logoff, restart, or shutdown Windows PC or Server remotely via Command Prompt and PowerShell, and how to use command prompt to shutdown and restart your computer.
To mitigate this, I will configure the Local Group Policy Editor to remove those buttons from the Start Menu on Windows computers. For similar settings, see the following link.
Below are the steps to remove the shutdown and restart button from the start menu via the local group policy. For how this is done in a domain-wide environment, see a similar method on how this is done via the Group Policy Management Tool in Active Directory.
Launch the Local Group Policy as shown below
– Navigate to the Computer Configuration
– Administrative Template
– Click on Start Menu and Taskbar
Click on ok. And this will have the policy state changed to Enabled as shown below
Next, update the group policy object for it to take effect immediately in order to avoid the default time of 90 minutes.
Note: For similar steps to configure this policy via Group Policy Management Tool, see the referenced link above.
As we can see, the shutdown and restart buttons have been removed from the Start menu as shown below.
I hope you found this blog post helpful. Please let me know in the comment session if you have any questions.