Excellent Tips To Disable Access To USB Removable Device Drive In Windows
USB drive is basically a plug & play portable storage device which is used to copy/transfer data and files. It is lightweight and can be used as an alternative to floppy disk, CD or zip drive disk. When plugged-in to a USB port of your PC, the operating system identifies it as a removable storage device and allocates a drive letter to it.
If you wish to forbid or prevent the usage of USB drive, you can do so by disabling USB port support in your PC’s BIOS settings. However, you need to note that disabling USB port will prevent the system from using any USB based devices such as mouse, keyboard, scanner, printer, webcam etc.
As a workaround, you can use the below mentioned registry trick to stop USB device drivers from starting upon system boot process.
1> Go to “Run” (Start Search in Vista) Option in the Start Menu. Type in “regedit” and press “Enter” to open the Registry Editor.
2> Locate the registry key mentioned below:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\UsbStor
3> Within the right pane, double-click on the value name “Start”.
4> Alter its value data and make it “4” so as to disable removable USB device drive access.
5> If you wish to re-enable the USB drive access in future, just set value data for the value name “Start” back to “3”, which is the original default value.
The change will be instantly effective and block the use of any removable USB storage devices like USB key, portable hard disk, USB flash drive etc. on the system. Nevertheless, hardware components will work normally via USB connection. This trick can be used in most of the Windows operating systems including Windows XP, Vista, Server 2008, 2000 and 2003.
If you do not wish to alter the registry using the above procedure, follow the below mentioned steps in order to enable/disable the USB drive.
1> Download the registration entries files mentioned below (Free downloads are available on the internet)
EnableUSBDrive.reg
DisableUSBDrive.reg
2> You need to extract the file contents in .ZIP format. Double-click on .REG file and open it. Now apply/merge registry values to the system.
The other option for you is:
You may also download the USB Drive Disabler, a free tool in IntelliAdmin which can be used to change registry key value to either enable or disable USB drives with a single click. Just select “Enable USB Drivers” or “Disable USB Drives” accordingly and click on the button “Apply” in the IntelliAdmin dialog box that appears.
Download IntelliAdmin
USB Drive Disabler supports operating systems including Windows XP, Vista, 2000, 2003 and 2008. Incase of Windows Vista, you will have to run the program with administrator rights.
