Disable the Use of Removable USB Sticks

Sometimes you may find the need to block the use of USB devices on a computer. This could be very useful if you are network administrator. You may also want to do this on a home computer if you let other people use the computer often. One of the problems we found is that unauthorized people can take information from a machine, simply by popping in a USB storage device and then downloading the data. There are two possible ways to avoid this problem, and can be concurrently used.

To disable this option:

If a USB device has never been installed:

Go to the folder: \ windows \ inf (hidden), locate the file usbstor.pnf, right click on it, choose "properties", choose "security".

Select the group that you want to deny access to and mark the box Deny. Click OK.

Repeat the same for the file usbstor.inf.

If the device has already been installed before:

Localize the key with regedit. To open regedit, simply go to "Start", "Run", type regedit, then hit "OK". Navigate to the following:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SYSTEM \ CurrentControlSet \ Services \ USBSTOR

Change the contents of the variable "Start" to 4. This will turn the USB storage off.

You should now be all set. If you need to reverse your changes, simply do the opposite of the steps above.

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-By Dominic

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