How To disable Protection Of USB Devices in Windows PC

Write Protecting USB Devices

You can enable or disable write protection of all USB devices that are connected to the Windows operating system. Both settings are configured in the Windows Registry. Here is how this is done.

Open the Windows Registry editor with the shortcut Windows-r, enter regedit into the form and press the return key on the keyboard.

Navigate to the following Registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\StorageDevicePolicies

Please note that you may need to create the key StorageDevicePolicies if it does not exist. Select the key afterwards and right-click into the right window. Select New > Dword (32-bit) Value from the context menu and name the entry WriteProtect.

Double-click the new entry afterwards and change the value from 0 to 1. A value of 1 disables writing to all connected USB devices. If you want to enable writing again you need to change the value of the key to 0.

The new setting takes effect immediately. Every user who tries to copy data to USB devices with write protection enabled receives the following notification window.

It reads

Copy File
The disk is write-protected
Remove the write-protection or use another disk.

I have created two Registry files to enable or disable write protection. You can download a zip file that contains both files here: write protect

This way you can disable write protection with a click on a file, and enable it again when you have copied files to the USB device.

How-To Use the Local Group Policy Editor to Tweak Windows

How to Change a Setting

To enable a policy setting, just double-click on it, and then select the radial button labeled “Enabled” and click Ok. With some settings, before you actually see any change, you’ll need to close the group policy editor, then log out and log back in to Windows.

Here are a few ideas for how to use Group Policy to tweak your rig:

Customize Your Start Menu

In any version of Windows, one of the most frequently used parts of the GUI is the start menu, where you can launch programs and access all the vital locations in your PC’s file structure. You can customize the start menu, to an extent, by editing the Taskbar and Start Menu Properties in the control panel, but if you really want to get down to the nitty gritty you’ll need to use the Group Policy Editor.

You can find all of the policies associated with the start Menu in User Configuration > Administration Templates > Start Menu and Taskbar. There are tons of options to look at here, and the info panel will help you figure out what they all do, but here’s a few interesting ones, to get started:

Add Search Internet link to Start Menu

Enabling this setting will add a link to the start menu search bar which opens your default browser and performs a search for your term. Requires Windows 7 or Server 2008.

Turn off user tracking

Don’t like that your PC keeps track of which programs you run and which documents you open? Enable this policy setting to tell Windows not to keep track of this information. Turning off tracking will disable features that use the information, like the frequently used program lists.

Turn off automatic promotion of notification icons to the taskbar

Are  you the type that likes to keep your taskbar host to only the icons that you specify? If so, turn this setting on to keep Windows from letting any icons into the taskbar without your permission. This is only available in Windows 7.

Change Your Login Screen Background

Using the Group Policy Editor, you can change the image used as the background of the login screen.To do so, simply go the Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > System > Logon folder, and enable the Always use custom logon background setting.

Now, if you place and image called backgroundDefault.jpg inC:\Windows\System32\oobe\info\backgrounds Windows will use that image as the background of the logon screen.