IT Professionals

Disable The Control Panel (2k/XP/2003)

Posted by on Mar 16, 2006 | 22 Comments

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:

  1. Click Start and click Run.

  2. Type gpedit.msc and click OK.
  3. Within the Group Policy Editor, expand the following: User Configuration | Administrative Settings | Control Panel.
  4. In the details pane, double click Prohibit access to the Control Panel.
  5. 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[/tags]

  • Jerry Corder

    I use this command but I don’t want it to affect the administrator. Is there a way to do this?

    Jerry

  • Santhosh

    How can I Disable Control Panel on my Windows OS?

  • http://www.ccscomputersolutions.com.au Peter

    Very wellwriten well done good advise

  • John Scott

    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

    Administrators must have access to control panel. So how do I give access to the Admin only?

  • Dillon Brkich

    how can I get it not to affect the administrator from disabling the control panel

  • VIKAS JAIN

    I NEED THIS VERY MUCH. THANKS FOR PUBLISH THIS ARTICLE. THANK YOU VERY MUCH. OKEY BYE.

  • kiran

    but how i can enable control panel

  • gunter

    good info – before I implement the policy, I need to know how to revert and be able to enable control panel function

  • Gary Toney

    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

    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

    how can i disable control panel ? or i want stop to enter in control panel.

  • http://wp3.lockergnome.com/it/2006/03/16/disable-the-control-panel-2kxp2003/ frank

    i also need to disable it for users but not for the admin.
    is there a way to do this??

    thanks

    Frank

  • Nikhil

    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.

  • http://NONE KULDEEP

    THANKS

  • Joe C

    Well, with XP Sp3 2002 Home edition, I have followed the directions to the letter and the Guest is still able to open the control pane with access to each option.

    ???
    Thanks,
    Joe C

  • leivic

    QUOTE original post by Nikhil
    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.
    QUOTE

    Man, this step is very good… thank you…on my OS gpedit.msc cannot be found, maybe bacause my windows is a crack version so my option is only regedit… and this step is the best.. but instead of setting its value to 0, i set the value to 1 so that i disable the Control panel. However, if you are the admin, you have to set it to 0 and access the CP to make some changes, if you are done, you can set it again to 0 to disable it again…

    thank you…

  • Melissa

    Joe C- disable the guest account.

  • Jim Wq

    How do you do it for Individual users/groups and NOT ADMIN?

  • http://www.cosmicdesigner.blogspot.com joshy

    This is working

    nice,thank you……….

  • Rahul

    Nice………..

    Thankz…………….Itz ..Working 4 me…….

  • http://marnixhq.no-ip.org MarnixHQ

    Theres no “control panel” map existing. only Windows Update and Windows Media Player..