Monday, December 22, 2008

How to Disable USB Drives

How to Disable USB Drives

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\UsbStorNotice 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.

No comments: