IT policy disabling of "Show Desktop" button

[hk_mp5kpdw]

This is mainly for those who may have familiarity with IT policies. Some of the newer computers (Windows-XP) being given to folks at work have the "Show Desktop" button hidden/disabled. I think it's some IT policy but can't for the life of me figure out why they would want to do that... especially since they can still right-click on the taskbar and select "Show the Desktop" from there or press "Windows Key+D" to do the same. Has anyone encountered this before? What purpose does this serve? Is it the button itself that they object to? Can it be corrupted somehow to execute foreign code?

Those who have admin rights (a select few) can still execute a simple script to restore it and many have but it's a pain.

[jwenting]

I never wonder about "security policies", I just laugh at them.
The vast majority is born out of misplaced paranoia rather than any real need.

Take one that I encountered, where a firewall blocked ALL traffic that wasn't http, and for http blocked everything that didn't have extensions htm, jpg, and gif.
Furthermore, all html was parsed and "cleaned" by the firewall to remove any javascript, css, and links to urls with different extensions than those 3.

Funniest side effect of that policy was that they'd blocked their own website, which made extensive use of CSS, javascript, and Flash, from being used by their employees.

[Fordy]

I had a job where they had IE locked into their proxy server so they could filter what they wanted and keep tabs on you. The policy stopped you from touching the network settings or browser settings.

I just copied the portable firefox I had on my pen drive and used that (they didn't bother to block http access outside of the proxy).

Policies are a pain in the butt

[hk_mp5kpdw]

Our IT policy settings at work force the IE browser's "home page" to be the organization's home page and you are prevented from changing it in the settings. You can go into the registry and change it there, but whatever they've got that scans everybody's computers resets it every 15 minutes or so and therefore it's kinda pointless. I just use Firefox and my homepage is whatever I want it to be.

[jwenting]

had such a thing once, hacked the registry to avoid that policy script loading

[cpjust]

I always delete the Show Desktop button myself as soon as I install Windows, since I never use it and it just wastes space on my taskbar.