• Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Advertise

Computer Tips And Tricks, Gadgets, How-To, Life - 2.0 Style

Get latest technology updates and computer tips and tricks.

How To Enable / Disable USB Removable Mass Storage Device Pen Drive Access in Windows

June 3, 2009 by Gautam

You can enable/disable USB port of PC / Laptop in BIOS setting. This will prevent and restrict computer users from accessing any external storage devices (flash drive, memory cards, pen drives, portable hard disks) and external action devices like keyboard, mouse, scanners, printers, web cams and such, through the USB port.

The advantage of this is, you restrict users from copying and transferring sensitive data to and from the computer. This is mostly a necessity in: offices to protect intellectual property and cybercafe / public browsing centers to prevent users from knowingly or unknowingly infecting the system with viruses.

Now what if you’d want to block only the storage devices and not keyboards, mouse and other media devices from accessing the system ? This is not possible with the BIOS setup changes, however there is a work around for this, which can be achieved by hacking the registry:

Here’s how you can disable USB storage device drive access in windows :

1> Click on “Start –> Run –> Type regedit and hit Enter.”

2> Navigate to “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\UsbStor”

3> Select the key UsbStor and double click on the Start value, which can be found in the right pane.

4> In Value data part, put 4 (numeric value four), if you want to disable USB storage and put in 3 (numeric value 3), if you want to enable USB storage on your computer.

How To Disable/Enable USB Removable Mass Storage Device Drive Access in Windows

The change will be effective immediately, however sometimes a reboot may be required. This hack will ensure that all the USB storage devices are disabled / blocked or enabled according to your choice. This works fine on most Windows operating systems such as XP, Vista, Windows server 2000, 2003, and 2008.

If you are not sure how to edit Registry files and are not comfortable dealing with them, download these zip files which contain .reg files. Once you extract the content of these zip files on to your local system, double click on the file and click OK to the warning prompt, and the registry changes will be made automatically.

Download DisableUSBDrive.reg
Download EnableUSBDrive.reg

Filed Under: How To's, Microsoft Windows Tips And Tricks, Security Tagged With: block, device, disable, Download, drive, enable, mass, pen, registry, storage, usb

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Faysal Kk says

    March 27, 2018 at 7:31 pm

    How to Disable All External Mass Storage Devices on a Windows
    please follow these video
    https://youtu.be/nmSfhRAdig4

  2. Deepak says

    June 2, 2017 at 12:12 pm

    HI
    i block USB port through registry, result is all pen drive is block but i use mobiles devices like copy to data in our system.
    can you please share me how to i block mobiles devices no one use mobile devices through data cable.

  3. Gone says

    March 14, 2015 at 9:23 pm

    The USB devices, DVD read or write is disable by administrator, I have tried the usual method Registry entry, Group policy edit, i did not find any thing usefull. This laptop have symantec and bitlocker, I am not sure which is blocking what any help is welcome

  4. viral shah says

    January 17, 2013 at 4:10 pm

    Works fine in xp,vista,7..thnx a lot.

  5. kevin says

    July 24, 2012 at 12:18 am

    pleace can you help me out with this i cant do it is still Disable can you show me how to do this i am haveing a lot of trouble

  6. HEMANT says

    March 30, 2012 at 12:02 pm

    THNX IT WORKS….

  7. Dipen says

    March 28, 2012 at 1:52 pm

    Hi,
    I have tried those steps, but unable to access UBS device.

    I believe the USb port has been disabled by IT guys from BIOS setting.

    Can you please tell me is there any other way or any patch available to enable it again by myself.

    Thanks.

  8. santosh says

    February 20, 2012 at 12:27 pm

    Its Not workin,few days it working but after that it is automically enable,give me the perfet solution or tool

  9. BHUVAN NAIDU says

    December 18, 2011 at 9:15 pm

    Thanq

  10. veooce says

    November 11, 2011 at 7:33 am

    how to enable USB storege device if I’m as USER? coz I can’t modify in regedit….. plz

  11. khajamydeen says

    May 31, 2011 at 6:05 pm

    it is not working for me… do u have any tool for disable USB alone..

  12. nakul singh says

    May 28, 2011 at 7:45 pm

    I have a 32 g.b. pen drive which had 32 FAT file system.It displayed ditorted version of copied programme.So,I formatted it .On formatting, the file system was convertet into raw file system,so ,again I formatted it with HDDGURU LLF TOOL.Now, on connecting the pen drive into USB PORT,it is not detected .Kindly , help me.
    NAKUL SINGH

  13. matrix says

    March 3, 2011 at 4:57 pm

    @Barnelle Xiver
    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\StorageDevicePolicies
    now change value of WriteProtect to 0

  14. Margaret says

    January 23, 2011 at 7:16 am

    I am running Vista, my USB CD & camera disk shows up on my hard drive, but it does not give me the option anymore to download it onto my computer. I there fore have to copy and paste my photos can you help me? thanks Margaret

  15. BSaxena says

    January 5, 2011 at 10:31 am

    but this disables the Datacard… how to just disable the storage and not the datacard ???

  16. Yudi says

    November 2, 2010 at 12:25 pm

    I unable to download the reg files. they have been removed

  17. rajkamal says

    July 31, 2010 at 10:17 pm

    @Barnelle Xiver
    hey my server side is disable this one so how can i use this in user

  18. Barnelle Xiver says

    June 15, 2010 at 11:03 am

    how to disable write protection on my Generic USB Mass Storage Device. My Pqi 4.0 Gb usb flash was locked by write protection and I cannot delete or add data anymore and mark as write protected

  19. Ravi Rajput says

    February 13, 2010 at 4:29 pm

    thanks its really works

Primary Sidebar

Copyright © 2023 · Magazine Pro on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in