How can I prevent any user (not the admin) from changing mouse settings?

Question

In a school lab with PCs running Windows 11, I need to stop editing any of the mouse settings.

Answer 1

If you are using the pro version of windows or Windows server, you can restrict settings via Group Policy:

If your organization uses the Central Store for Group Policy management, to manage the policies, copy the ControlPanel.admx and ControlPanel.adml file to PolicyDefinitions folder.

This policy is available for both User and Computer configurations.

Computer Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> Control Panel -> Settings Page Visibility.

User Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> Control Panel -> Settings Page Visibility.

You can make a new configuration and hide the mouse settings (or any other settings, see here how which setting is named). To hide the mouse settings add the following rule:

Hide:mousetouchpad

Perhaps you also want to hide the ease of access settings as well:

Hide:easeofaccess-mouse;easeofaccess-mousepointer.

⚠ Do note that some people may rely on the ease of access settings.

Answer 2

Mouse parameters are found in the registry at key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Mouse.

You have specified you wish to keep mouse sensitivity and buttons swap. These settings are controlled respectively by items MouseSensitivity and SwapMouseButtons.

To save the current values of all mouse settings, run regedit, but you can't simply position to the key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel. You need to position instead to HKEY_USERS and find the user's key, which might look like HKEY_USERS\S-1-5-21-2063358666-2461647202-2508659107-1001\Control Panel. Once found, right-click Mouse and select Export.

This will give you a .reg file containing the user's mouse settings. However, applying it requires Administrator privileges, so you cannot just run it from a standard user account.

I suggest to create a task to run automatically on user login in administrator mode. Follow the accepted answer in the post Schedule a task with admin privileges without a user prompt in windows 7.

The scheduled task can run a .bat file that contains the command
REG IMPORT \path\FileName.reg.

This way, whenever that specific user account logs in, its mouse settings are reset. Other user accounts won't be affected.