How to disable USB drive on any PC

Disabling of USB port may some times be required, for example when you give your computer to your friend temporarily but want to be sure that it doesn’t get infected by any malware installations that may be possible by his infected USB drive, or in Office/college environments where confidential data is of utmost priority.

I tested this method on my Windows 7 OS running notebook but can be done similarly to any PC running on Vista or even Windows XP.

USB port disabling process

Windows 7 and Vista users can type regedit in the start menu and enter the Registry editor area. Windows XP users, go to Start, Run and type regedit there.

Depending on the computers settings in Windows 7, you may be asked ‘Do you want the following program to make changes to this computer?’. Click on Yes.

Quickly find the folder named ‘HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE’. Once you are there, click on it to open that folders content (opens in tree format).

Now find the folder ‘SYSTEM’ and then with in it, there is ‘CurrentControlSet’. Once here, head to Services folder and then finally to USBSTOR.

Click on the USBSTOR folder and you’ll see various entries on the right side such as BootFlags, DisplayName, DriverPackageId, ErrorControl, ImagePath, Start and Type.

Now either double click on ‘Start’ or right click and then select ‘Modify..’.

See a value data as ‘3’? Change it to 4 (keeping the Base in Hexadecimal only) and click on OK.

You’re done.

Test the changes by inserting any USB drive. Your computer now won’t recognize any USB Drive, if every thing went the right way.

To restore or Enable back the USB port, change the Value data back to 3.

If any USB is connected to the PC during the process, it won’t have any effect and will continue to run as usual. This process only takes effect if you connect a USB after the registry value data is changed.

Also see, How to disable Windows Office Genuine Advantage (OGA) notification.

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