It depends - are you looking to just stop the casual passerby running something mischieous, or do you need to create a completely locked down system which you can leave open for people to try and hack for long periods?

If the later, then you could go down the route of system policies, strong passwords, and running something like DeepFreeze to undo anything people might get up to even if they get arround the restrictions - but you'll probably find the system a pain to use yourself!

If the former, then what's wrong with Win+L, and just logging back in when you return?

Essencay - if it's a particular prog that someone insists on running when you turn your back, then (as long as you don't need to run it!) you could use the system policy restriction to deny particular programs from running...See this tip:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kben-us323525

It might be what you want?

Hmmm...I can't make that link work, but if a copy and paste the address in directly to IE it works!

OK, go here http://support.microsoft.com/

and search for KB323525

That should get you there!
[Message Edited]

Yikes...then Win+L is your friend in such a war zone...I do it habitually since I often deal with confidential matters, but in a shared office, so it's almost 2nd nature to kit Win+L whenever I leave my machine...I even find myself doing it at home when I go and make a tea

Thanks Sput...I think I'll stay with Win+L. Not in that kind of warzone Thanks for your help

yrag - why would someone need that when locking your machine is built in to XP anyhow? If you wanted to shutdown and force things to quit without user interaction etc, then that tool would help, but what does it add in this case? Am I missing some problem with Win+L?