From Windows Server 2003 or Windows XP there are two utilities that can be used to create policy lists. The first is Group Policy Object Editor, gpedit.msc. The second is secpol.msc. For the purposes of this document we will use gpedit.msc as it provides most of what is available in secpol and far more granular policies for workstation control. To open GPO Editor click on start then click run and then type gpedit.msc. Now you will be looking at two sections, Computer Configuration and User Configuration. Computer Configuration controls global settings such as password policies and Log on Locally. For the most part these can typically be left as-is.
The User Configuration will show a folder called Administrative Templates. Open this and you will see Windows Components, which are Windows XP applications, such as Terminal Services (RDC), Windows Media Player, Windows Update, Windows Explorer, etc. An example of setting these policies is to use the Windows Media/Playback/Prevent Codec Download policy to prevent the downloads of Windows Media Player Codecs. Start Menu and Taskbar can be used to configure settings in the start menu and task bar (seems pretty straight forward, right?). For example, you can use the Remove Run Menu from Start Menu to configure the system not to show a run dialog box in the Start Menu. Some other items you can do here include locking the taskbar, showing users the classic Start Menu, disable history of recently opened documents or remove Run/My Pictures/My Music/My Network Places/Favorites from the start menu.