Guide Disable Access to USB Flash Drive

By this tutorial you can disable access to USB Flash drive and thus can prevent computer user from using USB removable flash drive to copy and transfer data and files from your PC.

Step 1: Go to Start > Run > and type in regedit and press enter.
Step 2: Locate the following key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\USBSTOR

Step 3: Now on the right side double click on the value called Start & set it value to 4 & click OK.

Thats it. You have succesfully disabled access to the usb flash drive.

When you need to use your usb flash drive just change the value of Start to 3.

If you're too lazy or newbie just copy & paste these codes into a notepad file and save it with a .reg extension.

Code to Disable access to the usb mass storage drive :

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\USBSTOR]
"Start"=dword:00000004

Code to Enable access to the usb mass storage drive :

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\USBSTOR]
"Start"=dword:00000003

Please feel free to comment.

 

[Horoscope]

oh this is a interesting tutorial... will give it a try

but what about external HDD, even will that stop working

 

[XTechManiac]

Thanks.

Yes, I think using the following steps you can even disable access to external HDD.

Give it a try. Post the outcome..

 

[Horoscope]

yes ill try it today but i dont want the external HDD to stop working ?

 

[XTechManiac]

You can use two file Enable.reg and Disable.reg (Refer to post #1 for making these .reg files)

When you have to use external HDD just click on Enable.reg which will allow you to use your external HDD, and after your work is over just disable external HDD by clicking Disable.reg

Thats it..

 

[stormblast]

i was using this long back. but it does not stop access to external drives. only the usb flash drive cannot be accessed.

in the end i just disable all the usb from the bios which disables usb.

if there is another method to disable the external hdd via regedit do post here. thanks

 

[ultra vires]

Stormblast, you can probably try this thing out mentioned over here..

Need to disable USB thumbdrives but still allow USB keybaord - Petri.co.il forums by Daniel Petri

Remember to deny the permission for system.

 

[Sei]

Windows Vista onwards, there are plethora of options that you can modify via the Group Policy Editor.

Start>Run>gpedit.msc

All the options under User Configuration can allow you to change these kind of settings. Go crazy!