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Disable USB Drives

by Steve Wiseman on April 28, 2006 · 9 comments

in Windows


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Update 1/18/2007 09:23 PM EST – Some changes in windows have made this article out of date. Check out our new article on the subject to learn how to disable USB flash drives

Once in a while I have a friend, or customer that needs to keep people from using the USB ports to copy data off of a system.

It is easy to lock a machine down, disable the floppy, and cdrom in the bios. Many times when you try to disable USB – it disables it entirely.

This can be a real pain on newer laptops or systems that don’t even have a PS2 interface for the mouse or keyboard.

There is a simple registry change that will keep the USB storage drivers from starting when the system boots. Keeps people from walking up to a PC and copying data off with a USB key, but allows you to keep your scanner, keyboard, and mouse working.

As always – back your system up before messing around in the registry.

Just open regedit and browse to this key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\UsbStor

Notice the value ‘Start’

Switch this value to 4, and USB storage devices are disabled.

Switch this value to 3, and USB storage devices are enabled.

For those of you that don’t feel like messing around in the registry –

We wrote a program to do it for you

Download from here

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{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }

1 govardhan October 25, 2009 at 12:09 am

this tool will be very usefull for my day to day activity. thanks

2 zantetsuken February 12, 2010 at 7:56 am

This is very, very useful. Thanks so much..

3 cisco1700 June 22, 2010 at 2:58 am

Thanks a lot and great tool and tip !!!

4 HC February 9, 2011 at 12:07 pm

And what about FAT32 and other formats that’s not NTFS. Those will be available.
Do you know any way to do it?
Thanks!!

5 vinod February 28, 2011 at 9:35 am

This is a great tool for protect the pc

6 sweet March 10, 2011 at 1:47 pm

great.i feel one of the best i/p from ur site.
keep it up…………..

7 khan August 20, 2011 at 1:36 pm

thanks

8 Kaleel September 8, 2011 at 4:45 am

Hi,

i done know about this tool an how to use any body help me friends.

9 Lynn JS March 10, 2013 at 9:47 pm

hi, i have done all of it. It works for a pendrive but then when I insert another different pendrives / usb, it detects again. how can u explain this? kindly reply to my email.

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