I’m going to start posting a Windows or Mac OS X tip at least once a week, maybe even more. The tip for today will allow you to hide components from users, and keep them from re-installing apps such as games. There are multiple ways to do this, but this one works pretty well as most users do not even know this file exists. You will need administrator or power use
First you will need to navigate to the directory C:\windows\inf and look for the file sysoc.inf.
(if you can not see the C:\windows\inf directory, from explorer go to tools then folder options and make sure the circle to show hidden files and folders is selected)
Once you find the sysoc.inf file just double click on the file to open it. You will find quite a few lines of text, and for this example we are only going to pay attention to the games (you can use this to hide other options in Windows components such as IIS, MSN Explorer, MSN Messenger, etc...) Look for the line that starts with “Games” it should read something like
Games=ocgen.dll,OcEntry,games.inf,,7
Games=ocgen.dll,OcEntry,games.inf,hide,7
This will hide games from the windows component area, and the user will not be able to reinstall the games unless they have administrator privileges and know where the file is. This can also be accomplished through the group policy editor, but we will save that for a later post.
