Disable The Control Panel (2k/XP/2003)
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Having control over the changes that users can make to their computing environment is an important part of network administration. If you do not implement some form of user change control, you may end up spending a lot of time fixing problems that could have been avoided.
The Control Panel is the main interface for making configuration changes. With this in mind, you should consider disabling access to the Control Panel all together so users are unable to make changes after you have configured computers.
To disable the Control Panel in Windows XP:
- Click Start and click Run.
- Type gpedit.msc and click OK.
- Within the Group Policy Editor, expand the following: User Configuration | Administrative Settings | Control Panel.
- In the details pane, double click Prohibit access to the Control Panel.
- Click Enabled and click OK.
With this setting enabled, users will be unable to start the Control Panel or run any Control Panel items.
Tags: xp, diana huggins, disable control panel, config change
14 Comments
Jerry Corder
December 26th, 2006
at 10:22am
I use this command but I don’t want it to affect the administrator. Is there a way to do this?
Jerry
Santhosh
April 4th, 2007
at 2:32pm
How can I Disable Control Panel on my Windows OS?
Peter
July 17th, 2007
at 2:17am
Very wellwriten well done good advise
John Scott
August 15th, 2007
at 7:06am
This works great but I want to do the same as Jerry Corder, namely disable in the user but not in Administrator account. Is there a solution????
Thank you
John Scott
clifford salmon
October 8th, 2007
at 2:01pm
Administrators must have access to control panel. So how do I give access to the Admin only?
Dillon Brkich
October 11th, 2007
at 11:27am
how can I get it not to affect the administrator from disabling the control panel
VIKAS JAIN
October 13th, 2007
at 5:02am
I NEED THIS VERY MUCH. THANKS FOR PUBLISH THIS ARTICLE. THANK YOU VERY MUCH. OKEY BYE.
kiran
October 13th, 2007
at 6:05am
but how i can enable control panel
gunter
November 4th, 2007
at 10:19am
good info - before I implement the policy, I need to know how to revert and be able to enable control panel function
Gary Toney
November 5th, 2007
at 4:51pm
I work in a school and this is great for me making sure the settings are not changed but the Administrators must have access to control panel. So how do I give access to the Admin only?
Thanks
Gary Toney
Gina
January 23rd, 2008
at 11:24pm
Thanks for this info. It really helped. It was written very nicely, easy to understand but I have another question, like the others… is there a way not to disable the control panel of the administrator?
Gina
asadul hoque
April 22nd, 2008
at 11:12pm
how can i disable control panel ? or i want stop to enter in control panel.
frank
May 13th, 2008
at 8:21am
i also need to disable it for users but not for the admin.
is there a way to do this??
thanks
Frank
Nikhil
June 14th, 2008
at 2:19pm
Well I think we can use the registry edit steps to disable the the control Panel .
Follow below steps
[Please take a backup of the registry before doing this ]
In the registry editor navigate to the following key
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer
In the left pane create a DWORD, its name should be NoControlPanel and set its value ot 0.