How do I prevent desktop shortcuts from being made in Windows?

Solution 1:

First, make a copy of your desktop (e.g. DesktopCopy folder containing the shortcuts you want on the desktop) and put it in the documents folder (or another user defined folder).

Secondly, create a batch file which will copy (and overwrite!) your desktop with the files from the DesktopCopy folder). You can use the mirror function of robocopy deleting files not present in the source directory.

Then, with the task scheduler create a task (CopyDesktopContents), which starts at windows start up or logging in and which runs the batch.

If you want to add your own shortcuts on your desktop, just do so and again copy the contents of your desktop to the DesktopCopy folder, so that next time you (or another user) starts up the computer or logs in, the new copy will be used by the batch file.